


Magical Paw Prints

by miyakowasure



Category: Bakaleya6, Johnny's Entertainment, Johnny's Jr.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1604387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyakowasure/pseuds/miyakowasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juri and his friends are perfectly aware of how difficult, dangerous, and illegal it is to become an unregistered animagus. Yet they decide to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This monster of a fic was my challenge for Nanowrimo 2013, and it's finally both finished and edited! I can't even start describing how /absolutely relieved/ I am right now. I'm happy too, because it's my third nano fic but only the very first time that I've actually managed to finish the thing properly and even post it.
> 
> The number of chapters will probably be around seven but I'll reserve my right to change that, in case I decide to divide some of them a bit differently while rereading and posting them!
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy the story! :3♥

At eleven o’clock, like every year, the scarlet steam locomotive whistled and slowly started to move on the rails. Parents, younger siblings, and other people who stood at the platform Nine and Three-Quarters waved their hands. At the windows of the train dozens of teenagers waved back at them until the white steam covered the vision and King’s Cross Station was left behind.

Some younger students were dashing around the narrow corridor of the car, letting out eager shrieks of the happy encounter (“ _Finally! How was your summer? Did you really get a new broom? You’ll let me copy your Astrology summer homework tonight, right?_ ”), and Juri let a wide grin spread on his face when he opened the ventilation window and let the cool breeze make a mess of his hair before he sat back down on the soft bench. It was good to be going back again, even though there was a hint of sadness in the feeling too, now that he was starting his last year in Hogwarts. But it wasn’t the time to be moody. There was a whole long year ahead and Juri was determined to make it the best year of all.

“What’s so funny?” Jesse Lewis, a fellow Gryffindor starting his sixth year in the wizarding school and Juri’s best friend, asked from the other side of the table and continued searching for something from his bag.

“Nothing. Everything,” Juri answered with a shrug, his smile unwavering. “What’s that?”

Jesse had found what he had been looking for. He threw a small piece of plastic onto the table and chuckled, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a navigator.”

“It’s a muggle thing,” Juri pointed out the obvious fact, “why would you take that to Hogwarts? It will probably stop working as soon as you step your first toe across the borders of the school.”

“That’s what I told to my father,” Jesse snorted, “but he insisted I’d take it along. He’s an engineer. He likes to know how things work and he finds it incredibly interesting how magic blocks electronic devices from working. He made me promise I’d send that old wreck back to him in a few weeks. I think he imagines its insides will be full of pixie dust.”

Juri hadn’t heard anything so ridiculous during the whole long summer but he simply nodded; Jesse’s father was a nice man despite his constant weirdness. Besides, Juri didn’t really know many adults like him. Maybe Jesse’s father was a perfectly normal person in the eyes of his own kind?

“Seriously,” Jesse said and rolled his eyes, “sometimes I really wonder what made my mother fall for him. If what I’ve heard is true there were more than a few perfectly capable wizards in the town and yet she chose _a muggle_. I mean, there’s nothing wrong in being one but, you know.”

“Dunno, really. My family tree is all wizards and witches back to the Middle Ages or so,” Juri said and grinned, “Just wait until you find someone you really like. I bet you won’t care if she’s a witch or a muggle girl, as long as she gives you that one smile which makes your head spin.”

“Bullshit,” Jesse answered calmly, the both of them knowing Juri was right.

Every now and then someone walked past their compartment and raised their hands in a greeting through the glass of the door but nobody disturbed their peace, and when the commotion eventually seemed to quiet, Jesse went to peek out from the door to make sure there weren’t anyone on the hearing distance.

“How about _the plan_? Did you accomplish anything new during the summer?” he asked in a low voice.

“Not much - we spent most of the holiday at the relatives’ place,” Juri answered and leaned closer, “but there’s this one thing that I can do, look!”

He took a deep breath and concentrated until he felt an itching sensation that tickled his scalp and the sides of his nose. Jesse’s eyes widened in awe and Juri knew he had managed to do it again.

“Cool!” Jesse gasped and raised his index finger to touch the thin whiskers that had grown on the both side of Juri’s nose, “And your hair, too!”

Juri glanced up even though he already knew what had happened. His deep brown hair had gotten a shiny black color with a narrow streak of white in the middle of his front hair. Yes, it was cool, he mentally agreed with Jesse and tilted his head, just to make the strands of hair move so the change in their color became even more obvious. He was just about to say something when the door of the compartment flew open and Nakajima Kento, Juri’s classmate, waved his hand at them. 

“Hi guys! It’s been a while! How was your summer?“

Jesse immediately jolted up with a wide smile on his face, obviously hoping to drag Kento’s attention to himself while Juri faked a huge sneeze, getting an excuse to cover his face and force his whiskers away while Jesse chatted with Kento.

“Huh, is that the candy troll? I better go back before it passes our car! See you,” Kento suddenly said and stepped back to the corridor, only stopping for one more second before leaving, “Nice hair color by the way, Juri!”

“Uh, thanks,” Juri murmured with an embarrassed smile. He had only concentrated on the whiskers and completely forgotten about his hair. Kento was already gone, however, and Juri let the darkness of his hair melt back into the ordinary brown.

“That was close,” Jesse sighed and flopped back onto his place. Juri nodded and sighed, deciding not to show off anymore. At least not before getting into a more secure place where his overly-social classmates wouldn’t just march in.

 

-

 

The whole thing had started almost four years ago. Juri had learned about animagi on his third year in Hogwarts and he still remembered the fascination he had felt when thinking about the ability to change into an animal by willpower. He had kept daydreaming about it for the whole year, amusing Jesse with his enthusiasm. 

That year Jesse had given him a book about transfigurations for a Christmas present. There had been a whole long chapter about the Animagus spell and everything related to it, and during the holidays a crazy idea had sprouted in Juri’s mind.

_"I want to try it," Juri whispered to Jesse when they came back to school after Christmas._

_"Are you out of your mind?" Jesse hissed._

_"I might be," Juri answered and to his delight saw Jesse's eyes starting to shine of obvious interest despite his disapproving tone._

_"It's dangerous," Jesse said, leafing through the Animagus pages of Juri's transfiguration book._

_"I know."_

_"And illegal."_

_"I know that, too."_

_"I want to try it!"_

_"I knew you would!"_

For the next weeks they had practically lived in the school library, looking for any relevant books and browsing through them, making notes about everything that could possibly have anything to do with their interests. It had taken them a long time before they dared to try the actual spell.

 

-

 

Little by little the blue of the sky behind their window started to turn into soft shades of light pink and flaming orange. Shadows deepened, the first stars lit up, and eventually the only thing the boys saw in the black window was the blurry reflection of their own faces. The train trip had been comfortable and nice but they were relieved to see the warm yellow lights of the Hogsmead station anyway.

"Did the navigationer already break?" Juri asked when they collected their things from the compartment.

"Navigator," Jesse corrected and glanced at the small grey screen of the device before pushing it back into the front pocket of his bag, "it seems to be thinking we're at the North Pole. To be honest I'm impressed. I didn't think it could even be switched on anymore."

"Maybe that will be fixed once we get into the castle," Juri suggested and stretched his arms above his head. "Man, I could eat a whole dragon!"

In the hallway of the castle they joined into the mass of people slowly entering the Great Hall. By the doors they saw a bunch of seventh-year Ravenclaws, one of which greeted them both with a high five when passing by.

“Had a good holiday?” Juri asked and Hokuto raised his thumbs up.

“My brother and I spent two weeks on a science camp. Just ask me if you ever need to know anything about electrolysis!”

Jesse laughed aloud and Hokuto grinned at them before continuing his conversation with his housemates and going to sit in their own table.

“Screw you two and your muggle things,” Juri murmured, although it was more from a habit instead of real annoyance. It was the like that every time after the long weeks of summer, during which his friends were continuously exposed to the non-magical side of their lives. From years’ experience Juri knew his the acquired extra muggleness of his friends would fade away in a few days. Until that he’d have to deal with their incomprehensible humor. He could only be thankful that Kouchi wasn’t that bad.

Speaking of Kouchi, Juri thought. He stretched his neck and scanned the Hufflepuff table with his eyes, trying to locate his friends from the sea of black robes. He smiled when he saw both Kouchi Yugo and Morimoto Shintaro already sitting in their table and animatedly chatting with their housemates. With a glance to the other side of the Great Hall Juri made a similar check to the Slytherin table until he met Kyomoto Taiga’s eyes. Taiga raised his hand in the air for a second and flashed a quick grin at Juri before the both of them sat down on their own tables.

The food was as delicious as ever and after the meal the boys wished they could float up to the Gryffindor Tower instead of climbing all the stairs to their dormitories. Juri’s roommates were already there when he arrived, both unpacking their trunks and changing into their pajamas at the same time.

“Oi, did you see the new Ravenclaw girl? The one who sat right behind you Kento!” Morohoshi Shoki, the third Gryffindor boy of their age flailed and rolled around in his bed, making a comfortable nest of his pillow and blanket.

“The blonde one? Big boobs, long legs,” Kento specified in an amusement tone and laughed aloud when Shoki nodded frantically. “She’s been there for five years already!”

“What?" Shoki gasped and then frowned. “Isn't she an exchange student? I thought I had checked out all the okay-ish girls of the school!” His shock was so honest and confusion so deep that Juri took a pity on him - only after a good laugh of course.

“She didn’t look like that before this summer,” he admitted, “Her hair was darker and, uh. I think she has done some serious renovations to her wardrobe. Her new clothes are much more… _flattering_ than the old ones were.”

“How do you know? She wore a dress robe tonight,” Shoki asked, clearly not quite ready to believe his roommates' words.

“I saw her at King’s Cross in the morning,” Juri explained. Kento was already giggling aloud and Juri couldn’t help joining into the laughter. He was thankful of the thick stone walls that wouldn’t let their noise through to disturb anyone.

“But honestly, I don’t get it,” Kento said and rested his chin on his crossed arms once they managed to compose themselves and were all lying on their beds again, their heads towards the foot of the beds so they could see each other. “Why are you so unhappy about it? This just means she’s a new addition to the assortment. Why don’t you just try to hit on her?”

“She already tried to hit on me, two years ago,” Shoki sighed and made a face, “I turned her down.”

“Shit. Bad luck, man,” Kento agreed and shook his head. However, after a few moments his face brightened again. “Does that mean she’s free for me to try?”

“Moron! You can’t play with a girl’s feelings like that,” Juri retorted and threw his pillow at Kento.

“I’m not going to play with her! I’m just going to make her fall on my irresistible charm,” Kento calmly answered with all the dignity he had, easily dodging the pillow.

“Too bad your charm isn’t located between your ears,” Shoki made a sarcastic remark.

“Too bad your charm is located between your legs,” Kento snorted back. 

A second of silence followed his words before everyone laughed again, even louder than before. After a while Kento, still grinning, tiptoed to put out the candles and returned into his bed. Juri wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes, flopped down on his back and rolled around until he was comfortably stuck between his warm blankets and big soft pillows.

“You two are the most idiotic guys I’ve ever met in my life,” he pointed out from his comfortable roll of beddings.

“Takes one to know one,” Shoki murmured from his bed.


	2. Chapter 2

The first morning of the new school year started like any ordinary day as people on different stages of wakefulness wandered from the dormitories to the Great Hall.

Jesse had just joined Juri and his roommates who were having breakfast when an owl-shaped piece of parchment fluttered through the air, stopped abruptly as if it had hit an invisible wall and fell, splashing right into Juri’s cup of pumpkin juice.

“Careful! I borrowed this book from Hagiya; he’ll totally kill me if it gets all sticky!” Shoki cried out and pulled the precious object aside.

Juri fished the wet origami bird from his cup and opened the folds, revealing a short message. The ink had gotten messy but the text was still readable and Juri glanced up at the Ravenclaw table where Hokuto shrugged and smiled at him apologetically. 

_Let’s meet at the library in the lunch break_ , the message said. Juri raised his thumb up in the air and Hokuto nodded as the sign of a successful exchange of information.

During the breakfast the Prefects of the Houses walked around the Hall handing every student a piece of parchment, except for the sixth year students who got two.

“How did your O.W.L.s go? What classes will you have?” Juri asked, trying to peek over Jesse’s shoulder and noting how the said shoulder was once again an inch higher than it had been two months ago. “Seriously,” he whined, “stop growing already! You’re like a freaking giraffe!”

“Can’t help it though,” Jesse chuckled and handed his new timetable for Juri to see. “I don’t know about my classes yet. I passed everything with at least ‘Exceeds Expectations’ but I’m not sure if I can do the N.E.W.T.s for all of these subjects next year. I’ll have to talk with the Head of House about it. My appointment will only be right before lunch time so I guess I’m free to come and go as I wish until that.”

“Lucky you,” Juri murmured as he eyed at his own timetable that looked pretty much the same as it had been on the previous year. He still started every week with a double lesson of Astronomy. That day’s first lessons, however, were Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology, both subjects he liked.

“I’ll walk around the school with dad’s navigator,” Jesse decided and folded his O.W.L. results and the appointment time parchment into his pocket, “I wonder what will happen if I take it close to the charms class…”

“Whatever,” Juri chuckled and the Gryffindor boys finished their breakfast chatting, comparing their timetables, and wondering when the Quidditch practices would start.

When the bell rang and everyone got up to leave to their lessons Jesse vanished upstairs, waving the navigator in the air while he went.

“I don’t get those things,” Kento murmured amusedly and Juri nodded in a perfect understanding. They shuffled through the hall and out of the doors, heading towards the old greenhouses, one of which had recently been modified to be the new classroom for Care of Magical Creatures.

They were in the middle of a deep discussion about last year’s Quidditch Cup when something big attacked them and the both of them let out surprised yelps, meriting two identical laughs from the guys who had tried to tackle them.

“Morning,” Hokuto greeted and rushed to walk in front of Juri and Kento, his back towards their direction of travel.

“Hey Gryffindor kittens, we were looking for you in the Great Hall!” Hokuto’s Ravenclaw roommate, Fuma, said and stepped between Juri and Kento, throwing his arms over their shoulders. “You could’ve sent us a word you were here already!”

“Wouldn’t that have robbed you the opportunity to surprise us and hear Kento scream like a girl?” Juri asked and Fuma laughed, admitting Juri was right.

The four boys barely made it to the classroom in time and their teacher, a relatively young witch, took a deep breath when she saw them. Tanaka Juri, Matsumura Hokuto, Nakajima Kento, and Kikuchi Fuma were not bad boys per se; they were honest and good-hearted boys, and it was obvious they really loved her subject. If only they had been less noisy and carefree she wouldn’t have needed to fear for their safety on every single lesson. She couldn’t help liking them but at the same time she was secretly relieved it was their last year in the school.

On the lesson they were divided in pairs and each pair was given a small cage of bright blue half-an-inch tall insects called Billywigs. Their task was to observe the Billywigs and make notes of their behavior.

“They’re funny,” Hokuto said thoughtfully and peeped through the small holes of the cage. The tiny insects were hovering in the air and their swift gyrating made a low humming sound.

“They’re exactly like you when you’re overly tired,” Juri teased and finished his drawing. He put his quill away and waited until the ink on the parchment was completely dry.

“Want to color it, too?” Hokuto asked and fished a flat packet of crayons from his bag.

“Sure, thanks,” Juri said and opened the packet. Plastic crayons were one of the most useful muggle inventions that Juri knew, and it wasn’t the first time he used them; Hokuto liked drawing and often carried them around, and always let his friends use them as well.

In fact, the crayons were the original reason Juri knew Hokuto.

It had been early spring in Juri’s third year in Hogwarts. Juri and Jesse had been sitting in the library for the whole evening, tall piles of books about Transfigurations on the table next to them. Hokuto had been finishing his homework in the library on the same evening. He had been about to leave, passing Juri and Jesse’s table, when the strap of his bag had suddenly gotten stuck somewhere. Hokuto had accidentally dropped the bag and its contents had spread around the floor. Juri and Jesse had seen everything, and had gotten up to help the Ravenclaw boy to collect his things, crawling around the floor after his parchments and weird colorful sticks.

Until that day Juri had never seen crayons like that. He had only used colored pencils or chalk whenever he had wanted to draw something. 

_“What’re these?”_

_“My crayons. Muggle-made plastic pencils,” Hokuto said with a shrug. He thanked them for the help and introduced himself in the same breath, smiling sheepishly._

_“To be honest I’ve been watching you two lately. I couldn’t help noticing you were up to something.”_

_Jesse threw a nervous glance at Juri who just smiled, hoping it would look even moderately convincing._

_“We’re just reading, out of curiosity.”_

_“You’re studying,” Hokuto pointed out and tilted his head, “and definitely not for the lessons. Those books aren’t anything you’d need on our level.”_

_“It’s nothing, really,” Juri insisted, wishing he could have just changed all the books on the table invisible._

_“You’re trying to learn something on your own,” Hokuto continued guessing and eyed at the books with such a curious look that Juri bit his lip hard enough that it almost bled._

_“Fine, fine! Don’t say it aloud!” he hissed and beckoned Hokuto to sit next to them. “Promise not to tell anyone!”_

_“I promise,” Hokuto said slowly, “if you take me along.”_

Juri and Jesse hadn’t had any choice but accept Hokuto’s demand. At first they had been slightly insecure about it. However, soon enough they had gotten to know Hokuto better and realized he was better companion than they had ever imagined. He wasn’t just a funny, clever-witted, and trustworthy guy; he also had a weird effect on the librarian and basically any female adult around. Hokuto only needed to ask politely and smile, and their Transfigurations teacher immediately signed him a permission to access the older collection that, due to the fragility of the books, wasn’t stored in public use anymore.

“Is everyone ready?” the Care of Magical Creatures teacher asked in the end of the lesson, “Good. I’ll now write down a few homework questions for you. Please answer them with your textbooks and own notations-- _Kikuchi._ What did I say about touching the Billywigs!” The whole class stopped packing their things and looked at Fuma and Kento’s table. The teacher’s loud question was well-founded but unfortunately late.

“Fuma?” Kento asked with a frown when the boy next to him tottered on his place, “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” Fuma murmured, fighting to keep his balance and forming a dizzy smile, “Just. Feels funny.”

“Look! He’s levitating!” the girl by the next table cried out and pointed at Fuma who indeed hovered an inch or two above the floor.

“Since you had to do the exact opposite of what I told you to do, couldn’t you at least have done it fifteen minutes earlier so everyone could have taken notes of the effects of the Billywig poison?” the teacher asked in a very fed-up tone and shook her head. “Someone take him to the hospital wing before he floats away on his own! Matsumura, Tanaka, and Nakajima. You’re his friends; I guess I can trust you?”

“Sure,” Juri said cheerfully and poked Fuma’s shoulder with his index finger, making the boy slowly rotate around in the air like a very slow and very big Billywig, “We wouldn’t leave our littlebird Ravenclaw in trouble.”

“Stop it Juri,” Fuma whined and his posture faltered again, “going around like this makes me feel sick!”

In the beginning they only needed to take a firm grip on Fuma’s sleeves and drag him along but it seemed like the effects of Billywig poison changed as time went by. They were only halfway on the path towards the main castle when the levitating effect faded away and Fuma crashed on Hokuto’s arms like a paralyzed Flobberworm. At the same time the dizziness seemed to only get worse.

“Stop laughing and help me,” Hokuto growled at Juri and Kento, his face bright red when he tried to hold up Fuma’s whole weight, the boy leaning his head on Hokuto’s shoulder and pressing his cheek against Hokuto’s.

“Sorry,” Fuma stammered with a confused giggle, absolutely clueless of what was happening around him. “You’re warm. I like it.”

“It’s like dragging a drunken friend back home,” Juri grinned and stepped closer to save Hokuto, supporting half of Fuma’s weight from the other side.

“What would you know about being drunk?” Kento asked and raised his eyebrows as he took Fuma’s school bag and threw it on his own shoulder. Juri just rolled his eyes at him.

“Why do you think I do? Seriously. I have three older brothers, one of which is a barkeeper.”

“Oh, well. You have a point.”

They barely managed to get to the castle when the bell rang again to mark the end of the break. By the corridor they met Taiga and Kouchi who were just about to climb upstairs.

“Juri! Where have you been? Come on, they say the new Divination teacher is really strict about students being punctual!” Kouchi said and frowned at Fuma’s giddy appearance. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Billywig poison,” Hokuto gasped and fought to stay on his feet and keep Fuma’s wandering fingers far from his sides at the same time.

“Oh. I’ve read about that,” Taiga said and nodded sympathetically, “it affects some people stronger than others.”

“I-it’s not that bad,” Fuma giggled and Hokuto slapped the back of his head with his free hand.

“Shut up, idiot. Come on guys!”

“Just go, Juri,” Kento offered, “The hospital wing isn’t far anymore and I’ll only have Potions on the next lesson. The teacher will understand.”

Kento took Juri’s place by Fuma’s side although Fuma was still mostly hanging on Hokuto and Juri thanked him, feeling both relieved and guilty. If there had been a slightest possibility of someone being in a real danger, he would never have left his friends like that. However, in the current situation Kento and Hokuto didn’t necessarily need him along so he supposed it was safe to rush after Taiga and Kouchi. He didn’t really want to be late from the first Divination lesson either.

They made it time and the rumors about the new teacher turned out to be scarier than the man really was. He was a very strict teacher and held them in the classroom until the last minute but he had an interesting way of teaching and the lesson passed quickly. 

As soon as the bell rang again Juri, Taiga, and Kouchi rushed downstairs, devouring their lunches in a record time. In less than fifteen minutes they were on their way towards the library.

Hokuto, Shintaro and Jesse were already waiting for them in their usual spot in the farthest possible corner of the big library, having a hard time trying to be silent enough that the librarian wouldn’t chuck them out due to disturbance of peace.

They had been gathering together like this for years already, the group accidentally growing when Juri, Jesse, and Hokuto hadn’t yet learned to be very secretive. Kouchi had been Hokuto’s friend since childhood and he had been quick to notice Hokuto had a secret he didn’t know about. Shintaro and Taiga, on their behalves, were Juri’s childhood friends and neither of them had hesitated to ask what was going on after they had accidentally overheard some pieces of the others’ conversations. 

After that they had all become more careful in order not to let anyone else know about their illicit activities. (Bless Shoki, Kento, and Fuma who had absolutely no tendencies to stick their noses into other people’s businesses.) From Shintaro’s suggestion they had started to spread the idea of the six of them being a very tight-knit inter-house study circle. The cover story seemed to be taken well among the people around them; at least no-one ever questioned them.

Not that anyone ever had any reason to be suspicious - they really did study together. What the other people never knew about was that after the mandatory exercises they opened new books and studied all the theory and practice about transfigurations. After all the reading they had come into the conclusion that mastering the transfiguration of inanimate objects would help them in learning more advanced kind of transfigurations. Constant practice made miracles and sooner than later the six of them ended up being the favorite students of their Transfigurations teacher.

Being mere sixth graders Jesse and Shintaro couldn’t obviously practice anything during the summer but nothing had stopped the older boys from trying everything they could. Unfortunately, none of them had been very successful.

“Nothing,” Taiga said with a shrug, “I had lots of time and I’ve been trying many times but nothing works.”

“Same here,” Hokuto sighed. “I only managed to change all shoes in our house into bats. You should have seen my parents’ faces when they looked for the shoes and found the colony of bats hanging from the ceiling in our hallway… Of course I changed them back again but it took ages to find the last one that had gone hiding.”

“Do your parents let you do magic inside the house?” Kouchi asked curiously, “As soon as I turned seventeen my mother announced I have to go out to the potting shed if I want to do anything like that. She doesn’t quite trust my skills yet. I guess that’s because as a kid I had this habit of breaking things even if I as much as glanced at them. Even after all these years she’s worried over her antique china. She doesn’t forbid dad from using magic indoors but I don’t think she likes that either.”

“My father’s the same,” Jesse said and grimaced, “he’s really interested in magic and eager to know more about everything but he’s afraid his computers will get all messed up if mum does too much magic in the house. I guess that’s why he rarely brings his work laptop and the company’s cell phone home.”

Juri, Taiga, and Shintaro shared a blank look across their muggle-bred friends. The three of them, all coming from old wizard families, had never needed to think about such problems. The Kyomoto mansion was secluded enough in the countryside that their family rarely had to deal with anything related to muggles. Juri and Shintaro’s families lived in a small village where only a rough fifth of population was magical folk but since they had both been homeschooled before going to Hogwarts they hadn’t had much personal contact to muggles before getting to know Kouchi, Jesse, and Hokuto. Even among them only Hokuto’s family was purely non-magical.

“I learned something during the summer!” Juri announced as victoriously as he could without raising the volume of his voice too much. That immediately aroused his friends’ attention.

“No, really?”

“Show us!”

“It’s nothing much but I guess I could show you quickly,” Juri said and glanced around to make sure no-one was anywhere close to see them. Then he repeated the same thing that he had shown to Jesse in the train on the previous evening. The whiskers tickled his nose and he smiled when the color of the hair hanging in front of his eyes changed.

“Cool!” Shintaro gasped and Juri felt his cheeks getting warmer under the boy’s admiring gaze.

“It is quite effective,” Taiga said and there was a hint of apology in his expression when he frowned, “but are you sure it’s the real charm? I mean, I never heard anyone changing only partially?”

“I know,” Juri admitted and let the whiskers and color shrink back into his skin, “that’s what I thought, too. But at least I was able to do it without my wand!”

“That’s surely something,” Taiga agreed. “Now, I guess we’ll just have to continue practicing. Let’s meet in the hideout after the afternoon lessons!”

“Uh, about that,” Shintaro said and looked slightly distressed, “I forgot to mention earlier. I passed the corridor last night when going to sleep. It’s gone again.”

“Shit,” Jesse moaned and Juri let out an annoyed sigh. It had been the same last year. Two years ago they had accidentally found a secret entrance to a room that no-one else seemed to know about. Ever since that they had used the room for practicing and hanging around whenever they felt like that. However, in the beginning of the previous year they had noticed the door had been gone. They had been disappointed by the loss of the room that had become so useful to them but it couldn’t have been helped. Not until one evening when Shintaro had noticed a familiar-looking painting hanging on the wall, not far from the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room.

They hoped it was no big deal this time, either. They would just have to find the same painting again.

“Fine,” Juri said, “we’ll start in the evening. There’s not much to do in the library anymore anyway.”

He was right; the long afternoons and evenings of the past three years had been enough to go through the whole enormous library and Juri was pretty sure they had read through every single book that could tell them something new and useful about the Animagus charm.

After that the conversation slid into other topics and the six boys spent the rest of the lunch break chatting in the library until it was time to go again.

“Will you have lessons today?” Juri asked Shintaro when they were walking along the corridors.

“Yeah, I already met the Head of the House in the morning. I’ll have History of Magic in the fourth floor.”

“We’ll have Charms in the next room!” Juri said and couldn’t help a surprised smile.

“Just go before me,” Taiga said and nodded towards the staircase that led towards the Slytherin dungeons, “I need to get my textbook from the dormitory before the lesson.”

The boys took their leave, each to their own classes. Juri and Shintaro walked slowly upstairs, Shintaro talking animatedly all the time. Juri laughed whenever Shintaro said something funny, took part into the conversation whenever he felt like that, and enjoyed their time together. It had been a while; Shintaro’s family had traveled abroad for almost two months in the summer so Juri hadn’t had the opportunity to hang around with him after the beginning of July.

Shintaro had been Juri’s friend since forever. In a way Juri could have said they were best friends even though it was very different than his friendship with Jesse was. The two of them had always lived in the same town and they had played together a lot ever since the early childhood. There weren’t many people in Juri’s life who could make him feel as comfortable as Shintaro somehow managed to do.

In fact, there were many things that only Shintaro could make him feel.

Things like the fluttering sensation in the bottom of his stomach whenever the boy as much as hung around in the same room. Things like the way his heartbeat immediately sped up whenever Shintaro smiled at him. Things like he suddenly forgot how to breathe and talk when Shintaro stood close enough for Juri to sense the scent of his shampoo and the warmth radiating from Shintaro’s body.

What made it even worse - or better - was that every now and then Juri felt like he might not be alone with his feelings. 

He had first noticed it around last Christmas, and every now and then after that. They were small things but Juri was quite sure he wasn’t imagining them. Sometimes, when their eyes met or when they were hanging around without the others, just something in Shintaro’s look and behavior gave Juri the tiny bits of courage and hope that he needed to nourish his own shy feelings from day to day.

“What are you thinking about, looking so confused? Are you even listening to me?” Shintaro suddenly asked, alarming Juri from the depths of his thoughts.

“Uh, not really,” he admitted with an embarrassed laugh and Shintaro rolled his eyes.

“Thought so. Is there something bothering you?” There it was again, the look that forced Juri to turn his own eyes away in order not to give away his true feelings right then and there.

‘You are,’ Juri wanted to say.

“Nothing much,” he said.

“You know there’s no way I’m going to believe you,” Shintaro chuckled, “but it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s okay if you want to wait until you’re ready to talk. See you after the lesson!” Shintaro waved his hand and jogged to the door of the History of Magic classroom. Once left alone, Juri stared after the other for a long time.

By dinnertime it already felt like any ordinary school day for everyone except maybe the first-years who always needed a week or two to get used to all the _weird_ that older students simply called ‘going to school.’ Having already spent six years in Hogwarts, Juri quickly returned to his usual lifestyle: lessons, food, having fun, homework, having more fun, sleeping, and going through it all again on the next day. Weeks passed and before anyone noticed it was October.

Juri and Hokuto were sitting in the Great Hall and playing wizard chess. Some time ago also Taiga had sat down next to them, reading a ridiculously thick book about the most common herbs in potions, and eventually Kouchi had found them as well and just sat by the table to follow his friends’ game. Right when they had all managed to fall into a blissful inactivity their peace was disturbed by Jesse and Shintaro who rushed in and ran through the Great Hall.

“The painting,” Jesse said in the middle of gasping for breath, “we found it!”

“No, seriously?”

“Where is it?”

Jesse and Shintaro promised to show them, and the older four collected their things from the table, trying to look like they were doing nothing wrong. They weren’t, not really. Not yet. It wasn’t forbidden to enter empty rooms around the school. Sure, they mostly needed the room to study forbidden things but nobody knew that anyway. Besides, it wasn’t the Animagus spell that was forbidden; being an unregistered Animagus was. What they did would only start being wrong after they learned the spell, right?

The painting was hanging in the middle of some other paintings on the corridor that lead to the staircase of the astronomy tower.

“There you are!” Juri sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why can’t you stay in just one place?”

The old wizard in the painting raised his very grey and very bushy eyebrows and let out a disapproving sniff.

“Why don’t you try hanging on the same wall for four hundred years, sonny? Do that and then come to ask the same if you still feel like asking.”

“The young nowadays,” a witch dressed in a royal purple dress robe said in a heavy-hearted and strongly disapproving tone, “No respect towards the elderly and always thinking they know everything the best.”

Juri snapped his mouth shut, feeling annoyed and strangely embarrassed at the same time for actually being scolded by an ancient piece of canvas.

“Sorry for his impoliteness, Sir,” Taiga rushed to say, “Would you please tell us where the switch is this time?”

“I wonder, I wonder…” the old wizard murmured.

“Please? We’d really appreciate your help,” Hokuto said and tilted his head, flashing a coaxing smile to the old wizard, “It’s an honor for us to be acquainted with such an experienced and wise wizard like you are.”

“Hmm hmm,” the wizard grunted and stroking his long beard, obviously not above of Hokuto’s flattering. “Well then, I suppose not all youngsters are hopeless, even these days. The switch is on the torch on the opposite wall. Yes, that one.”

Jesse reached to grab the torch and pulled a bit, causing a clicking sound somewhere inside the stone wall.

“There you go,” the old wizard said and nodded towards the wall next to the torch, and when the boys looked very carefully, they could see the outlines of a passageway. “Just step through the wall. It’ll lock itself once you turn the torch on the other side.

“Thank you very much!” the boys said and did as instructed.

Despite the new location their little hideout looked exactly the same as it had been before summer holiday. Even the book that Jesse had forgotten to take home with him was still on the table.

The secret room was small and cozy, exactly the right size for six boys to spend their time. There were no windows but the ceiling was high enough that the room didn’t give a cramped feeling. There was a table with six chairs around it, a whole bookshelf full of interesting books, a sofa, a few armchairs, and a thick furry mat covering the cold stone floor. All in all, from the very beginning the hideout had been exactly like they wanted it to be. They didn’t know how or why but it didn’t really matter to them.

“Finally!” Hokuto sighed and threw himself on the sofa, rolling onto his stomach and looking around the room like he wanted to see everything at once.

“I’ve been thinking,” Taiga said when they had all settled down around the room, “maybe we’re doing something wrong.”

“Something like what?” Shintaro asked from his favorite armchair and stretched his arms and legs across the arm rests. (When had that guy grown tall like that too, Juri found himself wondering.)

“Maybe we’ve been trying too much,” Taiga continued and frowned, “maybe we should just try…I don’t know.”

“Like trying and not trying at the same time?” Jesse asked and Taiga tilted his head.

“Well, yes… and no.”

Kouchi leaned back on the sofa where he was half-sitting and half-lying on Hokuto’s legs, and crossed his arms across his chest.

“That’s ridiculous. How could we do that? It’s not like we can simply decide to stop wanting to learn it and just ‘poof’ do it right away,” he said, and snapped his fingers to emphasize his words.

What happened next was too sudden and too quick for anyone to understand. In fact, at first the only ones who even noticed were Taiga who had been looking at Kouchi, ready to throw an icy question about him having any better ideas, and Hokuto whose mouth dropped open when he realized there was a red-furred squirrel sitting on his knee.

Everyone turned to look at Hokuto when he let out a loud wail of surprise and scrambled to sit up. The loudness of the noise probably scared the little animal that let out an ear-splitting shriek, stormed up the back rest of the sofa and straight up by the rough stone wall.

Juri’s eyes widened when he realized what had happened and apparently the others caught up with the situation at the same time.

“You did it!” he yelled in disbelieving awe, “It worked!”

For a moment there was a full mess in the room when everyone yelled their cheers to Kouchi. Too bad the squirrel didn’t seem to appreciate their praises. He let out a series of screeches and rocketed around the walls, darting from one place to other in an incredible speed.

Jesse was the first to get the problem.

“Shut up!” he suddenly hollered, “Can’t you see he’s scared!”

His words made everyone fall silent at the same time. They had all gotten up and stood around the room, staring at the squirrel who finally found a safe location behind the fancy decorations on top of the bookshelf.

“Hey, little one,” Jesse said in a low voice and slowly inched closer to the bookshelf, “It’s all right. We’re not dangerous.”

The tiny creature stayed behind the decorations and shivered violently but at least it didn’t run away when Jesse reached up to brush his fur with his index finger.

“Kouchi? It’s all right. Come down here?”

Slowly, carefully, Jesse coaxed the nervous squirrel to relax a bit.

“I’m going to lift you down,” he said in a soft voice and stretched to catch Kouchi in his hands. He held the small animal close to his chest and kept murmuring him in a comforting voice until he stopped shivering and dared to look around in a much more composed way.

“Feeling better already?” Jesse chuckled and allowed Kouchi to jump onto the table where he stood up on his two tiny feet, stretched his little arms, brushed the tufts of hair on the tips of his ears, and marveled at his beautiful fluffy tail. The way he looked at himself looked as if he was standing in front of a mirror in the fitting-room of some clothing shop, and the human-like movements on a squirrel looked so funny that none of his friends could help smiling.

Shintaro stepped slowly closer to the table and then crouched next to it, leaning his chin and crossed arms against the table.

“Don’t worry, you’re a very handsome squirrel,” he said and grinned, “But how did you _do_ that?”

Kouchi looked at him and shrugged.

“Can you change back?” Shintaro asked and Kouchi nodded. He made a graceful leap down to the floor and his friends gasped in surprise when his small character suddenly grew on his real size. His tail and fur withdrew back into his skin and sharp claws and big black eyes changed back to his own.

“Wow,” Kouchi said and a visible shiver ran through his spine, “that was…weird.”

“What _happened_ to you?” Juri asked, still rather thunderstruck by the surprise.

“The question is, who made the squirrel freak out,” Kouchi pointed out and glanced at Hokuto who scratched his neck and flashed him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, mate,” he said, “you totally scared the shit out of me too.”

“How did you do that?” Shintaro repeated his question and Kouchi sat down on the fluffy mat, roughing his hair and grimacing.

“I have absolutely no idea,” he admitted, “It just happened. I didn’t think I was doing anything.”

“Can you do it again?”

The other five were hardly breathing as they did their best to see every small movement Kouchi made, and the boy’s laughter had a hint of embarrassment in it.

“It feels weird when you’re staring at me like that. It’s not like you could actually see the spell,” he said and suddenly shrunk into pocket size again. He glanced at his friends, made a chuckle-like noise, and jumped back to the table. Without stopping he continued up to Jesse’s shoulder where he sat down, looking as adorably smug as a squirrel ever could.

“I’m a bit jealous,” Juri admitted to Jesse in the evening when they were back in the Gryffindor common room, sitting on the massive armchairs and enjoying the warmth of the fire in the fireplace. They had all tried the spell but no-one had been able to make it work, and Kouchi could only shrug apologetically for not being able to be any more helpful. He didn’t know what it was that he did differently than the others so how could he give advice to anyone else?

“It’s all right,” Jesse consoled him, “You will learn.”

“But when?” Juri insisted, “What else can we do? We’re already the best students of the school when it comes to transfigurations. Hell, I could change _you_ into a squirrel anytime. But how can I change myself?”

“At least your whiskers are cute,” Jesse offered and Juri snorted, unable to decide if he was more annoyed or amused about it.

“By the way,” Jesse said and fiddled with the hem of his sleeve, “are you going to do something about… Shintaro?”

“What about him?” Juri asked and threw an indifferent glance at Jesse.

“Don’t try to act stupid. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I know,” Juri sighed, defeated. Of course Jesse would see right through him. He always did.

“You like him,” Jesse said like it was no big deal at all, “and you know he’s not going to freak out just because you’re both guys.”

Juri knew. In their secret hideout they had talked about many things, and they had once brushed across that one too. Juri still remembered how blunt and carefree Shintaro had been, simply saying he didn’t mind other people’s orientations; straight or gay or anything else, he didn’t care as far as they were decent people. That time Juri’s feelings towards him had been purely friendship-based and he hadn’t thought much about the whole matter. He had never thought the piece of information would ever be relevant to his interests.

“What are you afraid of?” Jesse asked quietly, and Juri wrapped his arms around his knees, staring at the sparkling flames.

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. He really didn’t know what was stopping him. “He’s one of my best friends. Maybe I just don’t want to risk it.” The mere thought already made something inside him twist, causing an uncomfortable heavy feeling in his chest. He didn’t want to lose Shintaro. He couldn’t. He closed his eyes and hid his face behind his arms and knees for a while.

“Even if you might get something better instead?” Jesse asked and his soft voice reassured Juri’s alarmed feelings. “Hey, you’re a Gryffindor! Where’s your courage?”

“Look, who’s talking!” Juri snorted and narrowed his eyes knowingly when looking at his friend, “How about you and Morikawa? Why don’t _you_ go and confess to her instead of preaching to me?”

Jesse startled, and glanced quickly around.

“Don’t be so freaking loud!” he hissed through his teeth and Juri rolled his eyes.

“She’s not here. What kind of a jerk do you think I am, seriously?”

“Fine, fine I got it,” Jesse murmured, “Just drop it already!”

Juri did as asked and stopped teasing Jesse about his adorable crush. However, later when Juri was already lying in his bed, he found himself wide awake until the small hours. He couldn’t help thinking about Jesse’s words and pondering about what to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Kouchi’s success encouraged the rest of them to keep on trying, and before a week had passed, they were surprised again.

It was a rainy, boring evening in late October. Juri, Taiga, and Shintaro were spending time in the hideout, doing their homework and chatting about whatever came up to their minds. 

Juri glanced at his wristwatch and sighed. Hokuto had had something important to do after dinner and he had promised to come to the hideout later, failing to specify what time ‘later’ actually was. Juri would have needed help with his Defense Against Dark Arts exercises but apparently he’d just have to find the answers all alone. Taiga wasn’t much of help; the curse that he had been given for homework had nothing to do with Juri’s curse.

Shintaro had been sitting in the corner of the sofa for a long time, staring at the air in front of him, and Juri had supposed he was simply deep in his thoughts. Maybe he had been, but suddenly he looked up at Juri and Taiga, a small yet somehow excited smile playing in the corners of his mouth.

“I think I can do it,” Shintaro said. He stretched his arms and cracked his neck, grinned and raised two fingers into a peace sign - started to change. Juri’s mouth fell open from the shock as he followed how Shintaro’s familiar features suddenly switched to something completely else. Like Kouchi, Shintaro too grew fur but his fur was thick and grey, his ears pointed and nose long, and his paws were almost the same size as the whole squirrel had been.

If Juri had ever wondered what a living, breathing wolf looked like, he now got the best view possible as he stared straight into the eyes of one.

Juri hardly dared to breathe when the wolf studied his face. He remembered Kouchi’s reaction to changing and tried not to think about what it would look like if Shintaro’s inner wolf threw a similar fit.

“Juri…” Taiga whispered in a wavering voice and Juri guessed Taiga was feeling the exactly same kind of a slowly raising panic as he was. Neither one of them managed to do anything else before the wolf stepped across the short distance, towards Juri. Juri gasped aloud and thought, for a fleeting second, about his wand that was in his bag behind his chair, but on the next moment he almost fell from the chair when he suddenly had his lap full of paws and ears and fur that was both rough and soft at the same time.

“Shintaro?” he asked and the wolf let out a whining noise, rubbing the top of his head against Juri’s shoulder and tapping his thighs with his paws. “You’re not mad are you? Not dangerous?” Juri asked, just to be sure.

If it was possible for a wolf to look accusing and amused at the same time, Shintaro sure did. He shook his head and sniffed Juri’s clothes curiously, making Juri squirm and laugh.

“Stop it! It tickles!” he cried out and finally dared to raise his hands to properly grab the fur on Shintaro’s neck. Shintaro seemed to like it; he let out a low happy growl and leaned his head against Juri’s hands until Juri understood he was actually begging for scratching.

“What kind of a wolf are you even,” he chuckled aloud, his tone much gentler than he had originally meant to, “An adorable attention-seeking puppy dog is what you are!”

After a while Taiga dared to walk around the table and crouch next to Shintaro, joining in to scratch his neck. Shintaro didn’t hesitate to show how much he enjoyed all the attention he got, and Juri couldn’t help a soft smile.

The torch next to the door made a clicking noise and Shintaro immediately looked up towards the noise. Juri looked up too and grinned widely. Hokuto had absolutely no chance to process what happened before he was lying on the floor already, a full-grown wolf’s heavy paws on his chest.

“Down, boy,” Juri laughed and almost took pity on his friend who looked like he was actually mute of the shock, his eyes wide and round when he looked up into the black eyes of the wolf.

“Juri, Shintaro! Stop being mean,” Taiga scolded, even if he couldn’t help smiling as well. Without any needless considerateness he went to push the wolf away from Hokuto.

“Shin--” Hokuto stammered, slowly seeming to remember how to form words. “Shintaro?” he repeated and looked at the wolf who had sat down next to him like any well-mannered family dog. Then the sudden understanding lighted up Hokuto’s face and he could hardly hide his excitement.

“Really? You can do it! Did you already tell Kouchi and Jesse?”

“Not yet. It’s kind of a recent piece of news from the last five minutes,” Taiga chuckled and Shintaro waved his tail happily. There was no doubt about how pleased he was with himself right at the moment.

“You brat, tell me on this instant how you managed to do it!” Hokuto demanded laughing and attacked Shintaro, scratching and tickling him until they were rolling around on the floor as a one big bundle of fur and limbs.

“There we have a mature adult wizard,” Taiga pointed out and shook his head, smiling at his friends. Juri nodded and grinned too, but it wasn’t Hokuto that he was looking at. 

As weird as the thought was, Shintaro was kind of good-looking even as a wolf. Juri liked his dog-like features that distantly reminded him of his own dog back at home. Going to a boarding school had its downsides too - one of them was constantly missing his pet dog. Why were cats, owls and toads allowed in the school when dogs were such a no-no? Well, he had to admit, a dog surely made more noise than any cat or toad ever did. Owls might be noisy sometimes but at least they lived in the owlery and thus rarely disturbed anyone.

“Juri? What are you staring at?”

The sudden words and Shintaro’s face just a few inches away from his nose awakened Juri from his deep thoughts and he blinked in surprise. Even though he had been looking at Shintaro and Hokuto his thoughts had distracted him well enough that he hadn’t really noticed Shintaro changing back.

“Nothing, I… Sorry,” Juri answered lamely and offered Shintaro a sheepish grin, “I must be tired or something.”

He wasn’t sure if Shintaro looked at him a bit longer than what was normal or if he was only imagining. He didn’t have time to keep wondering about it when Hokuto sat down on one of the chairs around the table, repeating his earlier question now that Shintaro could talk to him again.

“I… uh, how to explain it,” Shintaro said, “it’’s… it’s so tricky and simple at the same time.”

“Try, at least?”

“Well,” Shintaro said slowly, frowning in the same way Kouchi had done when he had been asked the same question. “You know, when you cast the ordinary everyday spells, you know, accio, fixing charms… The usual stuff that you know you’d be able to do even if you were half-asleep. When you do those spells you don’t need to wonder if they will work or not. You have your wand and you know you know the spell by heart and you just know whatever you want to make happen really _will_ happen. I… I think it’s the same here. You need to _know_ you’re able to do it.”

“Really?” Taiga asked, crossing his arms on his chest and clearly trying to understand, with weak results.

“Of course I’m just guessing,” Shintaro rushed to add, “but that’s the best way I can explain it.”

Hokuto nodded as if he understood but he said nothing. For the rest of the evening Shintaro amused them all by randomly changing back and forth every now and then. (“I need to practice a lot, or I might forget how to do it before tomorrow morning!”)

 

-

 

The Halloween party of the school was a spectacle that every student in the school always waited eagerly. On the Halloween eve only one lesson was held after lunch, after which everyone left the Great Hall to prepare for the party in their own dormitories.

Juri looked at the mirror and frowned. He had colored his skin to look much paler than usually, and dressed up with some old rags of clothing that his mother had found in the attic and sent him by their family owl. After dressing up he had splashed a big bottle of self-made fake blood all over his face and clothes, successfully making himself look like someone who had been violently assaulted to death. 

All in all, he was very pleased with his costume. The only problem were his eyes. He had managed to change their color with a simple color-changing spell but he wasn’t sure if the made-up dull greyish shade would stay for the whole evening.

“Are you ready to go?” Jesse asked from the door. He was wearing a ridiculously old-fashioned black dress robe and a black pointed hat with a wide brim. He had probably used some kind of a spell to make his nose much bigger and his teeth disgustingly yellow and twisted. On top of everything he was carrying along the most pathetic-looking broomstick Juri had ever seen - and he had seen many.

“I’m a witch,” Jesse explained when he noticed Juri’s questioning look, “This is what muggle kids think witches look like. They dress up like this every Easter!”

“Such medieval mental images, huh?”

“Pretty much,” Jesse agreed and grinned, “I considered bringing a stuffed black cat with me but it would be too much of a bother to drag it along the whole evening.”

The Great Hall was a stunning sight every year but even the seventh year students had to admit this time it was even more impressing than usual.

Hundreds of floating candles and carved jack-o-lanterns on the long tables were the only source of lighting in the otherwise dark Hall. Real bats were flying around, the windows had been covered with black velvet curtains, and when looking up at the ceiling they saw thousands of little stars glimmering on the cloudless night sky.

The party started with a feast, during which the students sat in their own houses’ tables. Afterwards they were allowed to switch tables to sit with their friends as they wished.

Juri frowned when he saw Shintaro’s costume; the grey ears and tail, and the furry pelt he was wearing.

“Are those real?” he hissed and glared at the ears and the tail.”

“Of course they’re not my own,” Shintaro snorted, rolling his eyes, “I’m not that stupid! I bought them in Hogsmead last week. I wouldn’t risk someone noticing anything. Besides, I wouldn’t even be able to grow the ears and the tail like you do - it’s either-or for me.”

Juri felt a bit embarrassed for having snapped so easily and he simply nodded, not really wanting to be forced to admit he had pulled too quick conclusions.

“What are you then?” he asked, in an awkward attempt to change the topic.

“I’m a werewolf of course,” Shintaro said as if it should have been obvious even without him saying it, “And you are…”

“A living corpse, maybe? I don’t really have a name for this,” Juri chuckled and grinned, “just wanted something bloody.”

“You’re weird,” Shintaro informed him and glanced at the tables where empty dinner trays had been switched with new servings of dessert. “Come on, I think I could finally manage to eat something more. Where are the others?”

“In the end of the Slytherin table. Let’s go there!” Juri said and pointed at the direction where he saw Hokuto, Kouchi and Jesse sitting together with Taiga.

A few hours later they were still sitting on the same place, chatting and having fun, and enjoying themselves. Juri felt like he would probably never have to eat again with how full he was, and the best news of the evening was the headmaster’s announcement that there would be no lessons before lunch on the next day. 

“The charms teacher totally got mad at me today,” Hokuto said and emptied his cup of pumpkin juice, “You should have seen his face!”

“It’s no wonder, it was both stupid and dangerous,” Kouchi scolded, and Hokuto grinned without a slightest hint of regret.

“I wasn’t the one who started it; Fuma was!” he defended himself and everyone laughed. In the middle of it Juri happened to look up and suddenly met Shintaro’s eyes. Shintaro just looked at him quietly, and Juri quickly looked away, afraid of anything the other might see in his eyes.

A sudden pain in his ankle made Juri grimace and he looked at Jesse, ready to snap at him. Jesse narrowed his eyes and Juri could only barely see his minimal twitch of head towards Shintaro’s direction. Juri shook his head and frowned, trying to ignore Jesse’s wordless message. It proved difficult when Jesse continued kicking his ankles and legs until Juri kicked back.

“Fine,” he shushed through his teeth and Jesse’s smug smile was even more annoying than usually.

“Huh?” Kouchi asked, “Did you say something?”

“Nothing,” Juri said quickly, “What were you saying about the charms?”

As time passed by, little by little people started to move towards their own beds and finally, when the big clock of the school hit three o’clock, the six boys decided it was time to go to sleep as well.

“Did you have something to do?” Jesse whispered with a meaningful glance at Juri. Juri simply pushed him towards the staircase.

“Go to sleep, brat,” he murmured. Jesse grinned and followed Hokuto upstairs at the same time when Taiga, Kouchi and Shintaro turned towards the corridor that lead to the underground floors of the castle.

“Shin,” Juri started, very aware about how there wasn't any way to avoid sounding incredibly stupid with what he was about to say. “I need to talk to you. Do you…”

“Huh? No. I mean, I don’t mind,” Shintaro said quickly and Juri wasn’t sure if his awkwardness was more comforting or unnerving. At least Shintaro didn’t laugh at him, which Juri supposed was a positive thing. He didn’t know why he thought Shintaro would possibly have wanted to laugh at him but he couldn’t help thinking so anyway.

Kouchi and Taiga shared an unreadable look but neither one asked anything (another thing Juri felt rather thankful for) and they left, leaving the two boys alone in the dimly lit corridor.

“Uh, can we find some… more private place?” Juri asked and Shintaro glanced around.

“The staircase to the astronomy tower? It’s right there and I doubt anybody will be passing by tonight,” he suggested.

Juri nodded and they tiptoed through the entrance hall. They couldn’t hear or see anyone but Juri kept having a weird chilly tickle in his neck the whole way to the staircase. He had a strange feeling the paintings and the old armors by the walls somehow knew two students were sneaking around in the middle of the night. Despite none of the paintings and armors reacting to them in any way Juri only dared to look around when they were safely at the door behind which the astronomy tower staircase was. There, in the dark corner, his back against the robust wood, Juri felt notably safer than at the open corridors.

“So,” Shintaro started but seemed to be unsure how to continue. “So, you… wanted to talk.”

“Yeah,” Juri murmured. He looked up to the ceiling, down at his own shoes, at the empty corridor in front of them, and finally almost into Shintaro’s eyes but not quite. His heart was beating as if he had just ran a marathon and his palms felt sweaty no matter how many times he tried to rub them dry against the sides of his jeans.

What had he been thinking about? What was one supposed to say in a situation like this? Juri had never confessed to anyone; what should he say? Jesse had teased him about the lacking courage. Well, there were many kinds of courage, Juri thought bitterly. He was pretty sure he could fearlessly fight a boggart or some other weird creature but somehow, at the moment, Shintaro frightened him a lot more than any magical creature he could imagine meeting.

He made the mistake of looking up into Shintaro’s eyes and shivered. The torches along the corridor were still burning and even though the torches hardly gave them enough light to perceive each other’s features, the light was strong enough that Juri could see Shintaro’s eyes and the way Shintaro was biting his lower lip. It was hard not to stare and Juri had to mentally slap himself before he'd start looking too creepy.

“I really don’t know how to say this,” he finally sighed. He felt so incredibly stupid and embarrassed at the same time. He was just a coward after all. The only thing that stopped him from escaping and running up to the Gryffindor common room was his pig-headed pride and maybe basic manners as well. He had asked Shintaro to come with him so he had better swallow his fear and say what had to be said.

“Try anyway?” Shintaro said and the softness of his voice finally made the magic. Juri slowly looked up again until they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“The thing is,” he started and took a shivering breath, “I like you. You know, that way.”

There, he had finally said it aloud. Juri blinked and felt a chill run up his spine. He was still afraid of Shintaro’s reaction but somehow it felt like the worst part was over already.

Shintaro was very quiet for a long time and Juri shifted his weight from one leg to another. Why did it take so long? Was Shintaro trying to come up with a nice way to turn him down after all? Maybe Juri had been misjudging his actions all the time?

“Me… too,” Shintaro slowly said and let out an awkward laughter, “You, I mean. I like you.”

The words were hardly audible but Juri heard them as if Shintaro had screamed them aloud. The nagging fear suddenly vanished from his mind but his heart was still racing in an undoubtedly unhealthy speed. He couldn’t help smiling and felt a warm wave flooding through his body when Shintaro smiled back at him, the both of them chuckling until the noise turned too loud and they suddenly fell silent when the sound of their laughter was starting to echo from the stone walls of the empty corridor.

“So, um. What do we do now?” Shintaro asked and Juri felt sincerely relieved. Insecurity was easier to stand when he wasn’t the only one feeling it.

“I don’t know,” he first admitted but continued after a while, “What people usually do when they like each other? You know, I’m being serious here.”

“Me too,” Shintaro said and glanced away for a second before looking back into Juri’s eyes. “Does it mean you want to be together with me?”

“Something like that,” Juri said and suddenly felt braver again. By now they were definitely past the worst part. A confession, an answer; they were across those already. They only had the backwash left and Juri didn't really mind that part much. “Yes. I want to be together with you. You know, I’m not the worst boyfriend option there is,” he added. A tiny piece of humor never killed anyone, right?

“I wonder,” Shintaro chuckled and grinned, and for Juri the grin was bright enough to warm the whole cool space around them.

Juri answered the smile and looked down again, for some reason locking his eyes to Shintaro’s hand. Without a second thought Juri reached across the short distance and took Shintaro’s hand in his own, just to feel his skin. It was warm like Shintaro’s smile, and so real that Juri felt a bit overwhelmed from that only. He had long ago lost count of how many times he had tried to imagine touching Shintaro in any way that couldn’t be explained as normal affection of close friends.

They stood like that for a long time - at least if felt like a long time - until Shintaro looked down at their linked hands and cleared his throat.

“We should go to sleep,” he said and Juri really liked how reluctant the tone of his voice was.

“I know,” he said with a nod but did nothing to carry out the plan. Suddenly, without any kind of a forewarning, Shintaro yanked on Juri’s hand and pulled him into a tight hug. Juri gasped when he felt Shintaro’s arms around his shoulders and the sudden warmth and Shintaro’s scent that immediately surrounded him.

“Don’t worry. I won’t change my mind by the morning,” Shintaro whispered right into Juri’s ear and Juri couldn’t help a small shiver. How had Shintaro guessed what he had been thinking about?

“You better not,” Juri chuckled and wrapped his own arms around Shintaro’s waist. It felt good to just stand there like that and Juri closed his eyes for just a tiny moment.

After a while Shintaro shook him a bit, laughing when he stepped back to see Juri’s face better.

“Are you falling asleep?” Shintaro asked and Juri couldn’t help a tired grin.

“What if I am?”

“Come on,” Shintaro said and rolled his eyes, “I’ll take you to the Gryffindor common room.”

Kento and Shoki were already sleeping when Juri tiptoed to their room. When Juri climbed up to his bed he noticed a hand-written note on his night stand.

 _I expect a full report_ , it said in Jesse’s tidy handwriting.

Juri grinned and crawled under his blankets. He actually had things to report, he realized and rolled around in his bed for a few times, simply from pure relief, happiness, and excitement.

Maybe he dared to say he was qualified to be a Gryffindor after all.

 

\- - -

 

The next morning was not quite as nice as Juri had imagined.

Firstly, he felt deadly tired even though he only woke up around half past ten.

Secondly, what actually woke him up was Jesse sneaking into their room and jumping on Juri’s bed with a huge leap, alarming him from his sleep.

“I did warn you,” Jesse said and nodded towards the small memo still on Juri’s night stand, “Now tell me everything.”

“Not so loud…” Juri whined and tried to pull his blanket across his head. Jesse, however, did not seem to find a problem at crawling under Juri’s blanket as well. There he stared at Juri until Juri forced his eyes to open and looked at Jesse who grinned widely and shook his head.

“It’s okay. Nakajima and Morohoshi already left an hour ago. Some people went to sleep in time, you know. But it’s okay; _just tell me what happened_.”

“It’s none of your business,” Juri mumbled and pressed his face against his pillow, unable to stop the smile that was growing on his face as the events of the past night quickly returned into his mind.

“It’s thanks to me that you can smile like that you know,” Jesse said with a smug smile that slowly turned into more sincere one. “No, really. You look like it went well?”

Juri simply nodded at first, not quite sure what he was supposed to say before he suddenly found the words.

“I… think I have a boyfriend. No, I really do,” he said, for the first time ever, and he really liked the taste and the feeling of those words.

“Man, congrats!” Jesse said and rolled onto his back, his smile getting even wider, “You know, you’re the first of us. Well, you two are.”

“I guess,” Juri chuckled and glanced at Jesse, “Thank you.”

“No problem. So, how was it?”

“How was what?” Juri frowned and turned to look at Jesse who answered by raising his eyebrows as if Juri had just asked something very obvious or very stupid.

“Kissing him, of course,” Jesse said, looking expectantly at Juri’s blank expression until understanding spread on his face and he sat up in shock, pulling the blanket along with him. “You _didn’t_ kiss him?”

“Cold,” Juri complained but sat up as well. “Well, no. We just… didn’t feel like that I guess. I mean, I want to kiss him, of course I do, but. Wouldn’t it have been a bit too rushed?”

“Too rushed he says,” Jesse moaned and buried his face into his hands for a moment, “Tanaka Juri. You’re… I don’t even know what to say. And Shintaro. What are you two, innocent virgins?”

“Rather big words from someone who has barely held hands with a girl themselves,” Juri pointed out in a more bitter tone than how he really felt.

“Not the point,” Jesse retorted and shook his head, looking so disappointed that Juri actually laughed at him.

“What did you expect to hear? That I pressed him against the wall and kissed him senseless?” he blurted out the first thing that came up to his mind, and immediately regretted his words as they brought along way too nice mental images that he’d rather not have had with Jesse in the same room. (With Jesse in the same _bed_.)

“Too much information,” Jesse announced and got up from the bed, “Enough with beauty sleep and adult-rated fantasies, the breakfast is served late today but it's almost over already. I’ll go downstairs, come to the Great Hall when you're ready!”

Juri didn't know what he had imagined when thinking about the next morning, or if he had imagined anything at all. Either way, the breakfast was the most awkward one that he had ever had, even though the other four seemed to be totally unaffected by the awkwardness that milled around Juri and Shintaro.

Shintaro looked up when Juri found his friends sitting together in the Hufflepuff table. Their eyes met and both looked quickly away. And yet, when Juri secretly glanced back at Shintaro he noticed a small smile on his face, much alike to the smile that Juri couldn’t prevent even if he tried to.

Everyone else was talking together while Juri and Shintaro ate quietly. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to talk to each other, and the feeling was far from the disoriented insecurity from last night. Suddenly they just didn’t seem to know how to talk to each other. Juri wondered if the others knew the reason.

Slowly, secretly, he looked at each of his friends through his bangs. No-one paid any attention to him. Juri knew Jesse was ignoring their silence on purpose but Hokuto, Taiga, and Kouchi seemed to be completely oblivious about the matter.

He winced in surprise when he felt a light nudge against his ankle. Seriously, what was with these people? It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten bruises from how Jesse had abused his legs during last night’s dinner. It took a moment before he realized it wasn’t Taiga who was kicking him from the other side. It was Shintaro.

Surprised, Juri raised his eyebrows in a question. Shintaro shook his head and smiled, leaving his feet where they were, leaning against Juri’s feet. The small gesture broke the ice between them and Juri chuckled quietly, shifting his own feet just so they were even closer to Shintaro’s. 

Maybe Jesse was right; maybe they were disgustingly innocent. Somehow it didn’t disturb Juri at all.

“What are you smiling at?” Hokuto asked and waved his fork in front of Juri’s nose, “One could think you’re in love with the mushroom pie when you look at it like that!”

“Who knows,” Juri said, and Hokuto soon gave up when he got nothing more to tease him about.

During the day it came obvious that the others really had no idea about what had happened last night. Maybe the two of them weren’t being quite as obvious as Juri had feared, after all. In fact, after the Care of Magical Creatures lesson Juri could have sworn Hokuto was acting weirder than he was, even though Hokuto himself assured him there was nothing wrong with him.

“Well, in fact there’s something,” Hokuto finally admitted, “I’ll show you in the evening, okay?”

Juri accepted the promise and they agreed to meet at the hideout after the Gryffindor Quidditch team’s practice. Juri tried to concentrate on the lesson again but he soon noticed the attempt was doomed to fail. He was present in the Magical Creatures class but his thoughts were circling around the Potions classroom where he knew Shintaro was sitting.

After the Quidditch practice it was already dark when Juri and Jesse walked back to the castle, and Juri felt like he could sleep for a week if only he had been allowed to. They left their brooms to the broom closet of the great hall and were halfway in the staircase when they heard the echo of running steps behind them.

“Juri!” Shintaro called and jogged to them, grinning when he stopped at the same step with them. “Sorry I’m late. You were quicker than I expected.”

“I’ll go first!” Jesse said cheerfully, winked at them and left his friends alone in the middle of the big staircase.

“Late?” Juri asked and frowned, “Late from… wait. Were you waiting for me?”

“I planned to,” Shintaro said with a shrug and Juri felt the familiar warmth flooding inside him again. At the same time he was painfully aware how sweaty and red-faced he still was. Gryffindor’s first game against Slytherin was only a few days ahead and they had trained with their full energy. Juri was actually shaking of exhaustion and he hoped whatever Hokuto wanted to talk about would be a quick thing.

"Are you coming to the hideout too?” Shintaro suddenly asked and Juri nodded in confusion. Had Hokuto asked them all to come? He wondered what was so important on such a late hour.

“Good, then I’ll wait for you while you’re showering,” Shintaro said happily.

“You don’t need to,” Juri said quickly, “It’d be a bother to you. Just go before me.”

“It’s all right. I'll wait,” Shintaro said and looked at Juri in a way that didn’t accept any complaints. “Don’t make me wait too long or I start to think about you in there and --”

“Fine, fine, shut up,” Juri hissed and pressed his hand on Shintaro’s mouth, only noticing how badly the action backfired when he saw Shintaro’s eyes that were shining from laughter. Juri quickly pulled away and swallowed. He was being awkward again, and it was even worse now that Shintaro was clearly handling the situation with much more ease than he was.

“Sorry,” Shintaro chuckled, “I suppose I shouldn’t joke about that?”

“No, I don’t mind! Uh, I mean… just. Just do as you wish,” Juri stammered and felt like jumping down from the Astronomy tower. Seriously, he had been able to hide his crush for more than a year already, so why did Shintaro’s presence make him feel like a lovesick idiot now that he had already got what he had wanted all the time?

“ _Go,_ ” Shintaro pressed, “I’ll follow you and wait in the corridor.”

Shintaro did wait him as promised. What Juri hadn’t expected was that as soon as he opened the door of the bathroom and tried to step out Shintaro pushed him back in and locked the door after them.

“Finally,” he sighed and grabbed the collar of Juri’s shirt in his fists but didn't quite look up into Juri’s eyes. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find you alone anywhere?”

“It’s not--” Juri started but trailed off mid-sentence when he realized Shintaro might be right. He had been hanging around with several people for the whole day - on purpose.

“Yes it is,” Shintaro said. He sounded depressed enough that Juri took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He raised his hands on Shintaro’s sides and pulled him closer until they were standing chest-to-chest; close enough that Juri could lean his head against Shintaro’s.

“When did you grow up like that?” he asked quietly, “I mean, both you and Jesse suddenly became so tall.”

“How would I know?” Shintaro chuckled sheepishly, “Ryu never grew this tall. They even joked about it at home, wondering whose child I really am since our parents aren't very tall either.”

“It’s all right,” Juri said and closed his eyes for a moment, “It’s comfortable like this.” He really meant it, and it got even more comfortable when Shintaro let his shirt go and wrapped his arms around his shoulders instead, very much the same way he had done last night.

“It’s been a weird day, huh?” Shintaro said and Juri nodded. It still was even at the moment but he actually felt easier about talking about it now that Shintaro was there with him.

“Definitely,” Juri agreed. “So,” he continued when Shintaro was quiet for a long time.

“So?” Shintaro asked and Juri squirmed, not really wanting to admit how clueless he felt.

“Now what?” he then murmured. Shintaro smiled and leaned back so that he saw Juri’s eyes without taking his arms off of Juri's shoulders.

"How about you kiss me?" he asked and seemed to be happily aware of Juri's sudden shyness. "Come on, it's just me."

"It's because of you that I'm like this you know," Juri whined, "You just glance at me and I'm immediately all confused and insecure and--"

His complaints were cut in short when Shintaro quickly leaned over and gave him a small peck right on the lips. Juri blinked, suddenly feeling like his heart had completely stopped for a moment.

"I really admire the famous Gryffindor courage," Shintaro murmured and brushed his fingertips across Juri's cheek, smiling amusedly, "But you know, just sometimes it requires a Hufflepuff to make sure things actually get done." He grinned and leaned closer again, this time to kiss Juri properly.

Juri's body worked on its own, without him telling it what to do. He closed his eyes and clutched on Shintaro's shirt, answering to the kiss curiously, his shyness slowly fading off when he realized Shintaro wasn't any better at kissing than he was. He liked it anyway.

A small gasp escaped Shintaro's lips when Juri gathered his nerve and moved his hands across Shintaro's back and sides, and Juri felt a bit lightheaded. Shintaro's lips against his own, the soft fabric of Shintaro's hoodie, the warmth of Shintaro's body, the small sounds Shintaro made when Juri tentatively ran his tongue across his lower lip; even such little things were almost too much to him for now. He could have continued it for hours, or maybe forever, if the fear of their friends’ way-too-curious questions hadn’t forced him to step back after a while.

“I think we should go already,” he said and leaned his forehead against Shintaro’s, “Before they think I finally learned the spell and changed into a fish.”

“That would be a sight,” Shintaro snorted, and suddenly turned serious. “What if that happened? What if one of you changes into something that can’t live out of water?”

“Then obviously one of us will throw him into a bowl of water and then he’ll change back.”

“But it’s not very much fun,” Shintaro sighed, “he could always swim in the lake but it sounds rather lonely business.”

“No-one has changed into a fish yet and we can always hope that won’t happen at all. Our Animagus forms are supposed to reflect our personality and inner traits. Which one of us look like a cold, slimy and soulless person to you?”

“Sometimes if feels as if all of you were like that,” Shintaro said, making a face, and Juri laughed.

“That’s because we like you,” he said and couldn’t resist the urge to kiss Shintaro once again before they would have to leave to the hideout. 

Once, or maybe twice.

It took almost fifteen minutes before they finally walked through the wall and found everyone already waiting in the hideout.

“Forty-five minutes, Juri,” Jesse said. His voice was mocking and he was rolling his eyes but Juri saw the amused twinkle behind the faked frustration, and he didn’t take Jesse’s words to heart. Not that he would have done so very often anyway. “Seriously, one could think you'd have learned to take quicker showers by now, considering there are six more people in your family, all wanting to use the same shower.”

“My brothers like to shower in the mornings,” Juri said with a shrug. “I’ll rather shower in the evenings to avoid queuing. Besides, no-one really cares. If someone takes too long in the shower the next one will just join him,” he continued like it was the most natural thing in the world. To him and his brothers it was.

“It’s true,” Taiga murmured from the other side of the room, “And they don’t really bother to check _who_ is in the shower before walking in.”

“Aw, Taiga. Are you still traumatized over it? That was years ago!” Juri laughed, and at the same time mentally thanked him for pulling the attention into himself instead of Juri and Shintaro. “You just aren’t used to that,” he tried to console his friend. Taiga only chuckled, pointing out the fact that as an only child he didn’t really need to get used to such things.

“What was it that you wanted to talk about,” Shintaro asked and slumped onto his favorite armchair, looking at Hokuto expectantly.

Hokuto and Taiga exchanged a silent glance, and Taiga nodded.

“We’ve been practicing,” he said, waving his hand between himself and Taiga. “And, well. We thought we’d show you, too.”

After such a preparing speech Juri already guessed what was going to happen. Yet he felt surprised and excited at the same time, hardly blinking when he stared at Hokuto and Taiga who, without any difficulty, changed forms in front of their friends.

The both of them shrank in size; Taiga more and faster than Hokuto. While Hokuto grew a greyish-yellow spotted fur, Taiga got a shiny light brown plumage. Hokuto’s pointed ears had cute tufts, and he sat down on the floor once the change was complete. At the same time Taiga spread his wings and flew a circle around the room, landing on the back rest of one of the chairs.

The lynx and the falcon were quite an impressing sight, especially together like that. Juri had only ever seen pictures of such animals so he was eager to take a closer look.

He didn’t need to wait long since Taiga rose up on his wings again and flew across the room, and when Juri raised his arm, Taiga landed on it, turning his head and looking into his eyes.

“Wow. You’re gorgeous,” Juri murmured and slowly raised his other hand. “May I pet you?”

Taiga nodded and turned his head even more towards Juri’s hand when he carefully brushed the soft feathers with his index finger.

“I don’t think I have to be worried over my a puppy form anymore,” Shintaro chuckled and scratched behind the lynx’s ears, “Just look at Hokuto. I’ve never seen a more domesticated kitten!”

“What else would he be but domesticated? He’s house-trained and would hardly survive two days in the wilderness,” Jesse joked and crouched next to them. Hokuto didn’t mind getting even more attention and happily slouched on the floor between Jesse and Shintaro.

“Feels weird,” Kouchi murmured when he too reached to pet Taiga’s head and back with his fingertips.

“Why?” Juri asked curiously, and Kouchi made a face.

“Squirrels are not necessarily falcons’ most common food but it doesn’t mean they can’t hunt squirrels as well, sometimes.”

Taiga turned to look at him with narrowed eyes and Juri could only barely keep his poker face when Kouchi winced just a little bit at the sudden movement. Juri had never thought a falcon would be able to look so unimpressed. Taiga let out a short high-pitched cry and jumped from Juri’s arm, landing on top of Kouchi’s head instead.

“Ouch,” Kouchi gasped, “mind the nails!” Taiga tilted his head, glanced down at his thin yellow toes and then jumped down on Kouchi’s shoulder instead.

“Thanks,” the boy murmured and rubbed his head with the other palm. “I didn’t say I was afraid of you eating me, did I?”

Taiga shook his head and comfortably ruffled his feathers.

“Did you say you’ve been practicing?” Shintaro asked and Taiga nodded again. He looked at Hokuto but the lynx seemed to be asleep or just too lazy to answer, Juri wasn’t quite sure. Taiga made a weird noise - something between a shriek and a chirp, and flew to the floor just to change back.

“For a while, yeah,” he admitted and sat on the sofa, looking at Hokuto when talking. “Sorry for not telling you guys. We just figured it was easier to practice with just the two of us. A pride thing, probably. We wanted to make sure we’d have the spell properly mastered before showing off to you.”

“It’s okay,” Shintaro said, clearly unable to separate his hands from Hokuto’s fur. Juri supposed Shintaro missed his pet dog as much as Juri missed his own, and at the moment Hokuto was pretty much the same size with Shintaro’s dog, if not just a bit smaller.

“Hey, what are you guys going to do on the Christmas holiday? My mother asked if you all would like to come over to celebrate New Year with us,” Shintaro suddenly said, “I know it’s a bit early but her owl came today and I thought I’d ask you now that you might not have made any overlapping plans yet.”

“Sure!” Jesse immediately said, and the others nodded - even Hokuto who apparently was awake after all.

“Great,” Shintaro said and grinned happily, “You remember the big forest close to my home? We could all go to play there! You know, like this,” he said and ruffled the fur on Hokuto’s stomach.

Juri and Jesse glanced at each other, both knowing what the other was thinking about. They liked Shintaro’s idea but there was a small ‘but’ in it. It meant they’d have to learn the spell before the Christmas holiday that was less than two months away.


	4. Chapter 4

Too bad they didn’t have much free time for anything but Quidditch practice as the first match of the season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, was quickly nearing. For the whole following week Juri and Jesse rushed to the Quidditch field every day right after the afternoon lessons. They only dragged themselves back into the castle for dinner, weary and shivering of cold after hours of flying in the pouring rain that kept falling for the whole week without a break.

In addition to the Quidditch practice the boys had their homework to do, and after that they usually collapsed to their beds, hardly getting enough sleep for the next day.

On the morning before the actual match day both Juri and Jesse were dozing off at the Gryffindor table after breakfast. Shintaro glanced behind often enough that he almost pushed his cup of hot chocolate down the table once. 

“Watch out!” Genki, Shintaro's classmate warned and moved the cup away from the reach of Shintaro’s elbow. Shintaro thanked and apologized, and looked back again. He couldn’t help worrying over his friends and was honestly glad the match would be over in about twenty-eight hours. When he turned back again his eyes met with Hokuto and Taiga who were looking at the direction of the Gryffindor table as well. Taiga shook his head and there was a worried wrinkle on his forehead.

The big bell rang, calling the students to the lessons. Shintaro saw Kento and Shoki trying to wake up the two sleepyheads but they didn’t seem to manage very well. Jesse murmured something grumpy and incoherent and turned another cheek against his arms while Juri didn’t even open his eyes as he promised he’d cast a toenail-growing hex on anyone who’d dare try to drag him along anywhere.

“Fuck Potions, I’m sleeping now,” Shintaro heard Juri cursing to his roommates when he approached the Gryffindor table. Kento sighed, shook his head and glanced at the two boys one last time before he had to rush after Shoki to make it to the lesson in time.

“It’s okay, I’ll take care of them,” Shintaro promised to Kouchi, Taiga, and Hokuto who nodded in relief and followed Kento and Shoki; they didn’t really want to skip their own lessons just because two of their friends were too tired to attend theirs.

Some people glanced at Juri and Jesse when passing by but nobody asked anything and after a while Shintaro was alone in the Great Hall with just Juri and Jesse. He quietly sat next to Juri and glanced around to recheck they really were alone. When he was sure there were no other people in the Great Hall he reached his hand and ran his fingers through Juri’s hair. Juri made a noise in his sleep but didn’t open his eyes, and Shintaro proceeded to rub his scalp with his fingertips until the feeling made Juri wince and slowly open his eyes.

“Shin? Why aren’t you on the lesson?”

“For the same reason as you,” Shintaro chuckled and smiled when Juri shifted his head closer to Shintaro’s hand.

“But you’re not playing before the end of November are you? It’s more than three weeks to your game,” Juri murmured confusedly.

“Idiot, I’m skipping because you are. Someone has to take care of you two.”

Finally Juri raised his head from the wooden table, looking into Shintaro’s eyes and frowning.

“It’s not fair,” he murmured and pouted, “You shouldn’t have to do things like this just because we seem to be a bit tired.”

“Living dead is what you seem to be,” Shintaro pointed out and leaned over to steal the kiss he had wanted to get for the whole week. Juri was immediately into it, resting his palms on Shintaro’s thighs and inching closer. If Juri's eagerness was any indicator, he had been missing Shintaro as much as Shintaro had missed him.

“Wow. So you’ve finally gotten to the kiss stage?”

In a speed of a lightning Shintaro and Juri jumped apart. On the other side of the table Jesse leaned his cheek against his palm and let out a tired yet amused laugh.

“Relax, there’s no-one else here.”

“You could have told us you were awake,” Juri hissed and Jesse shrugged.

“I just did.”

Shintaro couldn’t help a grin that spread on his face. He always found Juri’s embarrassment cute but he knew he had better not to say it aloud. He didn’t think Juri would be happy of getting described with such words.

“It’s fine,” Shintaro said quickly and stood up, pushing his hands into his pockets, “If you’re going to sleep through the whole day you could as well do it in your beds. Your shoulders will get all stiff if you stay here, and I don’t think the house-elves will like it if you’re still sleeping at the tables when they need to set up the lunch.”

With gentle coaxing (and some heartless forcing) Shintaro managed to make Juri and Jesse move upstairs. On the way he wondered if dragging a very sleepy Juri to the Gryffindor tower already counted as a habit when he had done it twice.

“I guess you’ll be okay from now on,” he said and glanced at the painting of the Fat Lady. However, before Jesse managed to say the password Juri grabbed Shintaro’s arm.

“Come with me,” he asked and both Jesse and the Fat Lady raised their eyebrows. “Just to sleep,” Juri clarified, “It’s not forbidden isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” the Fat Lady said slowly and studied Shintaro with her gaze, “You’re the first student in more than two decades to ask such a thing in the bright daylight. Usually Gryffindors try to sneak in students from the other houses in the middle of the night. And usually it’s boys bringing in girls or the other way around. ‘Just to sleep,’ you say. What else would you be doing with _him_ than sleep?”

“Well, uh, I…” Juri stammered.

“Just joking!” she suddenly cried out and laughed aloud, and Shintaro sighed. He didn’t really feel like explaining the quality of their relationship to a painting. “The password, please,” she continued and immediately let the door open once Jesse voiced the word.

They went through the door and arrived at the empty and silent common room. Shintaro had never seen the insides of the Gryffindor tower and eagerly looked around to see everything.

Many things were similar to the Hufflepuff common room; the furniture, the fireplace, and all the textiles from the heavy velvet curtains to the thick furry mat. Only the colors were different, and Shintaro realized he rather liked the deep redness around them. It felt warmer, somehow, than the yellow in the Hufflepuff common room. There was a fire in the fireplace and the curtains were half-closed, making the atmosphere feel safe and secure even though they were in a high tower that was beaten by rain and cold wind all around.

“This way,” Juri said and took Shintaro’s hand when they entered a narrow spiral staircase. The sudden smoothness of his behavior surprised Shintaro but he didn’t let go as they climbed the stairs. He supposed Juri was only insecure about these things whenever he paid too much attention on what he was doing.

“Play nicely,” Jesse said and smirked when he opened the door with a number six on it and closed it after. Juri made a face at the heavy wooden door before they headed up one more floor. Right before the door in the seventh floor Shintaro stopped to catch his breath after the long climbing. While standing on the stair landing he happened to glance out of the small window on the wall and swallowed. He was a Quidditch player and definitely wasn’t afraid of high places, but even then the view was rather shocking; the Lake far beneath them and the mountains and moors in the horizon. He could even see some roofs of houses in Hogsmead.

“Where’s the girls’ dormitory?” Shintaro asked curiously when he saw the round bedroom of the seventh-year boys. The Gryffindor tower was perfectly round without any extensions, and the girls had to sleep somewhere, didn’t they?

“Well obviously I’ve never been on their side… no, really, don’t laugh. It’s not because I haven’t tried. I guess every boy around has tried it once.”

“Only once?”

“The girls' staircase is enchanted. It changes into a huge slide whenever a boy tries to go up. No-one needs to try another time - and no-one also tells the younger ones about it so they’ll get the kids will get the questionable joy of finding it out themselves.”

“Oh,” Shintaro said and nodded, “but where do the girls sleep, then?”

“You saw the other door next to the boys’ staircase. That one is for girls. I think every other floor on the tower is on the boys’ side and every other is on the girls’ side. Did you notice how long the stairs were between this floor and the one before? This room is on the top of the tower so I guess the seventh year girls’ bedroom is right beneath, between us and the sixth year boys’ bedroom.”

It made sense and Shintaro nodded, thinking about the Hufflepuff dormitories; the tunnels that zigzagged under the castle very much like badger caves and ended to the cozy bedrooms.

There were five beds in the room but only three of them seemed to be on use as Juri, Kento, and Shoki were the only Gryffindor boys of their year.

“Guess which one is mine,” Juri said with a grin and Shintaro took a closer look at the big four-post beds. All three were on different stages of tidiness; one bed was neatly made while another was slightly cluttered, and the third one was a absolute mess. On the night stand next to the middle-tidy bed on the right there was a photo of a man and a woman, and a little girl in front of them. Shintaro didn’t know the people but he smiled anyway. The picture was perfectly still; taken with a muggle camera.

“This one is Morohoshi’s,” he said and pointed at the bed, and after that he didn’t really need to guess which bed belonged to whom. Nakajima would never leave his bed messy like the other bed was while Juri would never manage make his bed as tidy as the other one. Without even checking if his answer was right or not he walked to the bed on the left and threw himself onto the bed, spreading his arms and legs like a starfish and looking up to the curtains of the bed. They looked weird to him, being simple dark red with no other colors, so unlike the black curtains, decorated with thin lines of abstract golden pattern, that hung around his own bed.

“What are you waiting for?” he turned to ask from Juri who was still standing next to the bed, barely looking at him. “Oh come on, stop thinking about dirty things or I’ll show you some!”

He shouldn’t have said so, he knew he shouldn’t. But he couldn’t help himself; Juri’s reactions were way too amusing for him to not use the opportunity to say things like that.

Of course he was just joking. It wasn’t like he was any more experienced - or any less awkward - about these things. But, he mentally defended himself, at least he didn’t freaking _blush_ whenever someone teased him a little bit.

“Sorry,” he said and offered Juri an apologetic smile, “just come here. You really need to sleep or you’ll drop off your broom when you fall asleep in the middle of tomorrow’s match.”

Without a word Juri crawled to the bed, nose-to-nose with Shintaro, and threw the blanked on them both. For a moment they just lay there quietly, looking at each other, until Shintaro gently patted Juri’s cheek.

“The sleep won’t come unless you close your eyes.”

"Fine, fine,” Juri murmured reluctantly, as if he hadn’t been ready to sleep by the table in the Great Hall just a moment ago.

He soon drifted asleep. Shintaro followed how his stressed expression relaxed and his breathing eventually turned slower and deeper.

It wasn’t the first time they slept in the same bed; during the years of their long friendship they had visited each other’s homes countless times and had almost as many sleepovers. But it was the first time they slept in the same bed when being together, and the realization made him want to laugh and roll around and do all kinds of stupid things that people do when they’re really happy and really comfortable. However, he didn’t want to risk waking up Juri so instead of moving at all he simply settled for a retarded smile.

-

A thump of the door pierced through Juri’s dreams and he reluctantly opened his eyes. Shintaro was sitting next to him, apparently doing his homework.

“What was that?” Juri murmured and shifted closer to Shintaro.

“Nakajima just came to leave his books here.”

“Oh. What time is it?”

“Lunch time,” Shintaro answered and turned a page from his own studybook, “but we’re not in a hurry yet.”

Juri nodded and closed his eyes for a moment before Shintaro’s words really reached his understanding and he quickly sat up.

“Did you say Kento was here? Did he… did he say anything?”

“Not really,” Shintaro said, “He mostly looked curious. You might end up having to explain him some things in the evening.”

“I guess,” Juri said quietly and wrapped his arms around his knees. It wasn’t that he hated the idea but he couldn’t say he liked it either. He supposed Kento’s curiosity was a good sign but one never knew. Besides, the thought of such a conversation made him think about another, even more important one.

“Do you think we should tell the others?” Juri asked and glanced at Shintaro, “I mean, they will find out sooner or later, and I’d rather tell them by myself before they accidentally notice something.”

Shintaro nodded and put the book away, sighing.

“I’ve been thinking about it too. I’d be hurt if I heard one of them had been dating with someone for a long time without telling me about it.”

“It’s difficult,” Juri said. It was neither an objection nor a complaint, just a simple statement that Shintaro seemed to agree with.

“It is. But we should talk to them.”

“I know.”

-

The morning of the Quidditch match was rainy and freezing, just like the whole week had been. This time, however, both Juri and Jesse were fully awake.

“Relax, or you’ll jump onto the walls even without your brooms,” Hokuto chuckled when the six of them stood in the Great Hall. The game would only begin in an hour but the captain of the Gryffindor team wanted the team to gather by the Quidditch pitch early, in order to discuss the last-moment strategies.

“Can’t help it,” Jesse said and grinned, “I’d just like to be out there already. I dreamed of today’s game the whole night.”

“And the night before, and before that too,” Shintaro said, “I heard from Jinguji on our Care of Magical Creatures lesson. He said you’ve been sleep-talking the whole week.”

“Can’t help that either.” Jesse shrugged, and looked at his watch. “Juri, let’s go before I really start running around the hall.”

“Go and win,” Kouchi told them.

“We’ll be cheering for you,” Taiga promised next to him and Juri raised his eyebrows at his words.

“Will you, though?”

“I cheered for my house last year,” Taiga said calmly, “so this time it’s your turn.”

“Thanks,” Juri said. Shintaro simply smiled widely and raised up his thumbs before Juri and Jesse had to go to make it in time.

-

The Gryffindor team had planned for a quick match; their seeker who wanted to become a professional player once she’d leave the school had been training like crazy for the whole summer and autumn. They only planned to make a few goals to give her the time to find the Snitch and the game should be clear. 

The problem was that the Slytherin Keeper didn’t let the Quaffle through the hoops even once, while the Gryffindor Keeper was the newest member of the team and awfully nervous over his first real game ever. Even though Juri and the two other Chasers tried their best, the Chasers of Slytherin somehow managed to score whenever they got the Quaffle in their hands. Soon they were all wet and cold, and way too many points behind Slytherin to feel comfortable about it.

After a while the Captain of the Gryffindor team called for a time out and the Chasers agreed on a new strategy. If they weren’t going to score, neither would Slytherin. They would stop trying to make goals and simply aim to keep the Quaffle in their hands until their Seeker would find the Snitch and finish the game.

“Don’t worry,” Jesse yelled to Juri across the roar of the stormy rain when they were up in the air again, “If anyone tries to fly close to you when you have the Quaffle, I’ll hit the Bludger right at them. Keep your eyes open!”

Juri wasn’t sure if Jesse’s promise made him feel better or not.

In the end they couldn’t do much. The Gryffindor Seeker did catch the Snitch but the Chasers of Slytherin had been too good, and Slytherin won with ten points.

“Ten points!” Hokuto growled and kicked the wet stones on the pathway towards the castle, “Ten fucking points, why did they have to score the last goal? It’s so freaking unfair!”

“Hokuto…” Kouchi warned quietly with a glance at Juri and Jesse who were shuffling after them, “I don’t think that’s helping right now.”

“It’s okay,” Jesse sighed and fought to make a smile on his tired face.

“They were better, that’s all,” Juri said and nodded.

“This time,” Shintaro said and stepped between Juri and Jesse, throwing his arms across their soaked shoulders.

“Your clothes will get wet,” Juri said quietly but didn’t push the boy away. Shintaro was in the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. He understood, better than the others ever would. Besides, the weight of Shintaro’s arm felt comforting and encouraging in a way that nothing else felt.

“We’ll be better next time,” Juri turned to say to Jesse, who chuckled and nodded.

“Just make sure you’re a plausible enemy for us in our match,” Shintaro said and counted with his fingers, “You have about three months to make sure you’re better than I am. Which, of course, won’t happen - I’m sorry to tell you Hufflepuff is going to win that match, too.”

“You wish,” Jesse said, and even if he didn’t sound especially energetic quite yet, at least there was a hint of defiance in his voice already, and Juri smiled. He’d have to thank Shintaro later.


	5. Chapter 5

November passed quickly and turned to December, the days gradually getting colder until one day the rain turned into slushy snow. It was far from the perfect first snow straight from fairy tales but even then the sudden whiteness cheered up the people living in the castle. Before they noticed, weeks passed and finally came the day when the Hogwarts Express started its engine at the Hogsmead station and sped towards London, taking most of the students home to spend a well-earned Christmas holiday.

“Finally,” Hokuto cheered when they had all settled comfortably down in their compartment, “One more lesson and I’d have become crazy!”

“Says the one who’s supposed to be the cleverest of us,” Kouchi chuckled in amusement and Hokuto shrugged.

“The fact that I _am_ clever doesn’t mean I should be especially fond of studying.”

“And yet you get good grades, lucky bastard,” Shintaro murmured. It was a well-known fact that Shintaro struggled in most of the theoretic subjects. Juri supposed the boy was probably a bit jealous to Hokuto, too. After all Shintaro was the one of them who had been born in a wizard family while Hokuto had never even seen a post-owl before coming to Hogwarts.

“It’s okay,” Kouchi smoothed over the matter and they changed to nicer topics. When the witch with the tea trolley stopped by their compartment they all bought enough candies for at least three two-way train trips.

“How could we teach you two the spell,” Taiga wondered aloud when they were munching their sweets. Jesse glanced up from the Chocolate Frog cards he was arranging into the proper order and Juri nodded, frowning a bit. He felt like he was _so close_ to understanding how the spell actually worked. There was just something he couldn’t quite catch.

He already knew all the basic techniques of different transfigurations with a wand. He knew how to change things into animals. He even knew how to change a person into an animal, but it wasn’t the same as the Animagus spell.

“How do you do it?” he asked, even though they had been discussing the same thing over and over again for the whole year. “No, how did you do it the first time?

“It was an accident,” Kouchi said with a shrug, “I thought about changing and that was it. I really don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re just good at it,” Taiga suggested at Kouchi, leaning back and crossing his arms on his chest. “I guess I just needed to try many times enough. I did nothing different to my former attempts when I first changed. But you, you just did it,” he said and pointed at Shintaro.

“I knew I could do it,” Shintaro said thoughtfully, frowning as he reminisced the events of that evening in his head. “In fact, until that I had doubted if I would ever learn. It felt bad but I didn’t think I could help it.”

“But?” Juri asked curiously. Shintaro had never told them this part before.

“I got angry at myself,” Shintaro said with a small smile, “and embarrassed. I didn’t want to be worse than you guys. I suck at most things at school but that’s the one thing I really wanted to learn. I decided I would learn, without giving up, no matter what. And then, I just… realized I could do it.”

Juri listened to Shintaro’s honest words in a silent awe. He had supposed there had been something like that going on in Shintaro’s mind but he hadn’t really known for sure. He had known Shintaro many years enough that he usually saw when something was bothering the other. The problem was he never knew how to ask about those things. 

He suddenly realized he was feeling thankful to Shintaro, for telling them about his insecurities like that. It made him feel slightly better, to know that someone thought the same things as he did. Juri had been reluctant to admit it even to himself but the truth was he was just as afraid of not learning the spell as Shintaro had been.

“What about you, Hokuto,” Jesse asked curiously and Hokuto glanced at Shintaro when he started.

“Oh, I guess I forgot to explain,” he said, picked his wand from the table, and raised it in the air. _“Expecto Patronum!”_

Juri’s jaw dropped when he looked at the misty white cloud that seemed to come out from the end of Hokuto’s wand and took the shape of a large yet slender wildcat.

“Wow,” he whispered when they all followed how the cat played in the air around them for a moment before landing onto the luggage rack above Hokuto’s head. It wrapped into a tight roll and slept there until slowly fading away.

“I never knew you were so good at the Patronus Charm!” Jesse said, staring at the cat until there was nothing to look at anymore.

“I've been practicing a lot,” Hokuto said with a shrug and smiled sheepishly. “I do it sometimes. I love the feeling of finally learning how to do some very tricky spell. Anyway, one night I just wanted to see how long time I could make my Patronus stay visible. While I looked at it playing around, I got this small idea.”

“Oh,” Kouchi said, sudden understanding lighting his face, “One’s Patronus--”

“Usually reflects what their animagus form would be,” Hokuto finished his sentence with a nod. “I remembered it that night. I already knew what my Patronus looks like so I kind of had something I could base my transfiguration on. The cat obviously isn’t a lynx but it seems to have been close enough.”

The others nodded, quietly digesting the new piece of information. Juri wondered if he should work harder for his Patronus Charm in order to actually make it corporeal if nothing else worked, but he wasn’t sure if it would help at all. Who knew if his Patronus would be one of those that had nothing to do with his Animagus form?

“Say, Juri,” Taiga said thoughtfully, “When you did the whiskers trick--”

“It’s not the right charm,” Juri interrupted, “I read the Animagus Charm is either-or. One either changes or not, there’s no such a thing as in-between.”

“Yes, I know,” Taiga pressed, “but how did you come up with the whiskers? And the hair color? Why did you choose those?”

“I didn’t,” Juri said and tried his best to remember the first time he had managed to grow the whiskers. “They just appeared from somewhere.”

“Say, have you tried to think about them when changing?”

“Not really. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding doing that since it's obviously a wrong charm.”

“Try!” Taiga encouraged, “There's nothing to lose, is there?”

Juri sighed, not really believing it could help him much. He closed his eyes and did his best at concentrating on the thin whiskers and the black-and-white color that his hair would probably change into.

The familiar tickling feeling was there again, and Juri mentally rolled his eyes. It was no use trying. Though he had to admit it was rather funny how the whiskers _sensed_ things. He actually felt the tiny puffs of air from both Shintaro and Kouchi’s breaths. He knew when either one of them moved. The amazing smell of Kouchi’s Pumpkin Pasties on the table crawled into his nose and made him lick his lips.

“It worked,” Shintaro whispered and Juri looked up towards the boy’s voice. “ _It worked!_ ”

Juri blinked once, twice, and once more. He looked at his paws, shook his head so that the semi-erect ears flapped against his head, jumped down from his seat, and eagerly waved his tail.

It was weird. He didn’t know any other way to describe the feeling. At the same time, he found it extremely exciting. In fact, everything in the world felt good and exciting. He had learned the spell. His best friends were around him. Shintaro was smiling at him. And the best of all was the sweet smell of the Pumpkin Pasties.

“You did it!” Shintaro repeated and slipped down from his seat. He kneeled in front of Juri, sinked his fingers into Juri’s black-and-white fur and eagerly scratched the behinds of his both ears. The feeling was absolutely heavenly and Juri couldn’t help a pleased noise, something between a whine and a growl. He tilted his head to guide the scratching fingers just on the right places and swiftly waved his tail when Shintaro finally happened to find the tickly spots.

“I was right,” Taiga said smugly and leaned in to take a closer look, “not bad!”

“Sit, Juri,” Shintaro tried and even though Juri realized it was stupid, for some reason he didn’t mind and gladly sat down. It proved to be definitely worth it, with the way Shintaro’s eyes were shining when he leaned in to hug him. “Good boy,” Shintaro praised and Juri let out a small bark, just to try his voice.

“Careful,” Kouchi laughed and glanced at the door, “we don’t want anyone to hear you!”

“It’s okay,” Hokuto chuckled and he too crouched onto the floor to pet Juri’s fur, “we’re in the last car. Why would anyone--”

“Finally!” Kento happily exclaimed as he slammed the sliding door of the compartment aside. 

“We’ve searched through the whole train,” Fuma added from behind him.

The five boys and the dog froze in shock. The guilty atmosphere was probably visible since Kento glanced around curiously, hesitating to step across the doorstep.

“Uh, did we disturb something?” he asked.

“No, no, you didn’t!” Hokuto rushed to say and sat back on his seat again.

“Good,” Fuma said bluntly and stepped in, taking a place next to Kouchi and raising his eyebrows. “Where’s Juri, by the way? And whose dog is that?”

Juri let out a panicked whine but Shintaro scratched him more vigorously, forcing up his most innocent (and definitely the fakest) smile.

“We found this little furball wandering by the corridor. He probably jumped into the train at Hogsmead. And Juri went to the toilet just a second ago.”

Kouchi, Taiga, and Hokuto let out a collective sigh.

“Maybe you should take the dog to the conductor. I mean, someone might be missing their dog already. We can take him when we go back to our car,” Fuma offered and the five boys gasped a sudden “ _no_ ,” all at the same time.

“I… I’ll take care of him,” Shintaro stammered, “I’ll ask my dad to Apparate to Hogsmead with the dog when we arrive at London.”

“Why not just leave him to the people at the King’s Cross station and they’d do the same thing?” Kento suggested and Hokuto rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come on. If the kid wants to play it’s his pet just let him? It’s not like his parents would allow him to keep it anyway. They already have one.”

Kento shrugged and glanced out from the door of the compartment, probably hoping to see Juri coming back. Juri chuckled, but the noise came out as a mere sniff.

“He seems to be very well trained,” Fuma said and crouched next to Juri just like Hokuto had done a moment ago, “I mean, such young Border Collies are really energetic. If you don’t train them properly, they might come up with all kinds of nasty pranks; they’re very intelligent, you know. When you have one of these you must always offer them something interesting to do or they’ll find their own ways to entertain themselves. The owner might find all their shoes full of holes and hidden around the house, for example.”

“How do you know all that,” Kouchi asked and Fuma grinned at him.

“My uncle’s wife is a muggle who owns a dog breeding farm. She has a dozen of these,” he explained and scratched Juri’s sides.

Kento and Fuma stayed for a while but then the train started to slow down and they had to get up. Their luggage was still in the other end of the train.

“I just wanted to wish Juri nice holidays and remind him about the Astronomy homework he promised to let me copy from him. He was supposed to give me his notes in the train,” Kento said with a frustrated frown. 

“We’ll pass on the message,” Hokuto promised and waved his hand at the two boys when they stepped out of the door. “Have nice holidays!”

“You too,” Fuma answered with a warm smile before they had to rush away. Juri waited for another minute, until Kouchi peeked out of the door and nodded.

“The road is clear. Quickly, now. The train will stop in any moment and the corridor will be full of people again.”

Juri changed back and flopped down on the floor, leaning his back against the edge of the seat next to him.

“That. Was. So. Close,” he sighed and shook his head. Only now that the dog’s blissful lack of worries wasn’t disturbing his thoughts anymore he realized how close he had been to revealing their secret.

“I don’t think they suspected anything,” Hokuto said cheerfully and got up, stretching his arms and throwing his last Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans into his mouth at the same time. (“Ew. Dust, marshmallow, and probably cabbage - what a mixture!”)

In a few more minutes they saw the lights of the station behind the window. Once they had gathered their things they started to move towards the door. They got out of the train and Shintaro nervously looked across the mass of people.

“What is it, Shin,” Juri asked and Shintaro made a face.

“I’d rather not meet Kento and Fuma again and have to explain them where I lost the dog.”

“Then you’d just have to say you changed your mind,” Hokuto said with a shrug and waved his hand. “I’ll go now. My parents are probably by the parking lot - they always wait there. Have a nice Christmas, everyone! See you in the New Year's eve!”

“I’ll send you all an owl before that. Happy Holidays!” Shintaro called after him.

At the same time Taiga and Kouchi spotted their parents in the crowd and wished Juri, Shintaro, and Jesse a nice Christmas.

“Are you all right? You look rather pale,” Kouchi asked Jesse whose attempt to smile failed pitifully.

“Too many Chocolate Frogs,” Jesse said, “I’d better run, too, before my father tries to walk through every platform sign on the muggle side. He always forgets the number… Happy Holidays, everyone! See you!”

Juri hardly had time to answer to the greeting before Jesse vanished into the crowd. Taiga and Kouchi took their leave as well, and Juri found himself standing by the platform alone with Shintaro.

“So,” Juri said and looked up into Shintaro’s eyes, “I guess we should go too. Mum sent me an owl yesterday; she said she’ll Apparate here and get me and Subaru home once she’s finished cooking our dinner, and it’s almost the time.”

“Yeah, same here. I’ll need to find Ryu and Natsume,” Shintaro said. He glanced around to make sure no-one was paying attention to them and quickly reached to brush the back of Juri's hand with his fingertips.

“See you,” Shintaro said, and his smile made Juri wonder if he’d ever get used to the fluttering feeling in his chest that the smile caused every time. On the other hand he liked the feeling and didn’t really want to get used to it at all. “Send me an owl once you’re safely back home.”

“I will,” Juri promised and smiled as well. “Have a nice Christmas.”

-

After a bit more than a week Juri smiled when he opened his window and let the familiar grey owl in. The owl was carrying a bunch of envelopes, and waited patiently when Juri looked through them. There was one thicker envelope for him and five smaller envelopes, one of which was for him and the four others for Jesse, Hokuto, Taiga, and Kouchi. Juri carefully opened the threads that had been holding his letters, making sure the others were still tied tightly on the owl’s legs, and then let the big bird free again.

He left the window open to let in some fresh air and sat on his bed to open the envelopes. Even before taking the parchment out of the bigger envelope Juri knew it was Shintaro’s usual daily message. He had been sending such letters to Juri almost every day since the day they had separated at King’s Cross. The text itself was nothing very special - Shintaro was just telling him about the small events of his everyday life on the Christmas holiday - and yet they were more than special. Juri couldn’t quite explain it but it felt good to know that Shintaro was thinking about him even when they were too busy to meet in person despite living in the same town.

The other, identical to the other boys’ envelopes (Shintaro had obviously written only one letter and multiplied it with a spell), held in a short note:

_Hi everyone!_

_Mum sent greetings and said you’re all very welcome to come to our house tomorrow around noon and stay overnight or as long as you wish._

_Juri, Kouchi, and Taiga, just use Floo Powder; you know the address. Mum just cleaned the fireplace this morning. Hokuto, dad will pick you up at 11:55 from your back yard. I suppose you should inform your parents beforehand so they won’t be too surprised. Jesse, you have a fireplace in your home don’t you? Is it connected into the Floo Network? If not, answer me (the owl will wait) and dad will pick up you too._

_See you tomorrow everyone!_

_Shintaro_

Juri grinned at the thought of Shintaro’s father Apparating to the back yard of Hokuto’s home and knocking on the windows of their living room. 

He had met Hokuto’s parents a few times; they were very nice people, but very, very muggle. They had nothing against the magical world and they were always really friendly but for some reason, even after their son having gone to Hogwarts for six and a half years already, their reactions to magic were still exactly the same as they had probably been when they had entered the Platform Nine and Three Quarters for the first time: wordlessly confused. 

Juri knew Hokuto's parents had been a bit concerned when Hokuto had announced his future occupation was going to be one of the wizarding world but after Hokuto had shown them some very informative numbers about how much an average Healer in the Saint Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was paid per hour, they had immediately stopped worrying. They only had a very vague understanding of how to convert Galleons to pounds but a big number was a big number even when one didn’t know how big it exactly was.

Juri folded the letters away and started to gather a pile of things he’d need during the next couple of days.

 

-

On the next morning Juri dragged his bag downstairs and sat by the kitchen table where his mother had already set the breakfast dishes.

“Morning,” he greeted his little brother who was sitting on the other side of the table and nodded, his mouth too full of bread to allow him to answer verbally.

“Juri, dear, here’s a small present for the Morimotos,” their mother said and placed a bright-colored box on the corner of the table, “Please try to remember to take it along when you go.”

“I will, mum,” Juri said, spreading butter on his toast and trying to wordlessly make the cheese slicer do its work without his physical help. The cheese slicer shivered on the table but refused to move and Juri frowned at its unusual disobedience.

“Don’t bother,” Subaru sighed, his voice muffled with bread, “Sora dropped it onto the floor and I think it’s sulking. It didn’t work for me either.”

The tiny Chihuahua pricked up her ears when she heard her name and Juri shook his head, throwing a very scolding look towards her.

“You were walking on the tables again, miss?”

“I'm afraid you’ll just have to slice your cheese in the traditional way,” Subaru chuckled and Juri rolled his eyes because really, what could have been more traditional than making the cheese slicer work on its own with magic? His grandfather prided himself with having never done anything without magic; he always said only children and muggles used their cheese slicers and toothbrushes by hand.

“Morning,” Hyoga, the next in their line of brothers, murmured when he shuffled into the kitchen and slumped on his usual chair, dozing off by the table before reaching his hand towards the big kettle of black coffee that their mother had just brought to the table.

“Stayed late at work last night?” Subaru asked and Hyoga nodded drowsily, even though the smell of coffee seemed to bring him slightly closer to awakeness.

“There were dozens of wizards who have bought muggle fireworks and cast all kinds of spells on them. Not good. Some wizards were reselling the modified rockets in the muggle market. Even worse. The misused rockets couldn’t handle the magic, and some spells were simply badly cast. Either way, our team had ten places to visit once the rockets started to explode in the muggles’ storerooms. Most of the muggles were easy to Obliviate but a few were really pig-headed and refused to believe they had bought flawed rockets even after we had cast the Memory Modifying Charm on them trice.”

“Why don’t you just cast a very strong charm at once?” Subaru asked and Hyoga let out a short joyless laugh.

“Have you ever seen a person getting Obliviated? Some people react very strongly even to the lightest Charms and walk in haze for days after that. We can never know beforehand who can only take the lighter spell, and who are the though individuals that need multiple Memory Charms on them, so we always start lightly, just in case.”

Subaru nodded slowly and looked down at his cup of tea, and from the look on his face Juri knew he was thinking about his own future. Subaru still didn’t know what he wanted to do after leaving school. For Juri himself it had been clear for a long time already. He had already talked about the future apprenticeship contract with the owner of Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley. 

From the very first time he had flown on a broomstick he had known he wanted his future career have something to do with flying, and during his first years in Hogwarts he had dreamed of becoming a professional Quidditch player. Eventually he had realized the game was his favorite hobby but not something he'd want to do for living. For a while he had considered applying for a job in some of the biggest broom factories in Britain but in the end he had decided he wanted to do something with a more personal feeling. A small broom and Quidditch supply shop was the best place for the kind of detailed handcraft job Juri wanted to do.

The two youngest brothers were just finishing their breakfast when they heard a small knocking noise. Their mother opened the kitchen window, let a brown owl in, and thanked him when taking the letter.

“Kazu’s owl!” Subaru cried out and ran to pet the bird and give him some water from their family owl’s cup.

Their mother smiled when reading the message, “He says he’ll come home this evening and bring along the whole family.” She scribbled a short answer, gave the letter to the owl and sent him out to the bright morning air. Subaru was thrilled about the news and Juri smiled too, even though he wouldn’t be able to meet his oldest brother this time. It would have been nice to be at home of course but Juri didn’t feel very bad about having other plans. Kazunaru’s children were several years younger than Juri; it would take a few more years before his relationship with them would start to resemble one of an uncle and his nephews instead of Juri being an occasional baby sitter for the two- and four-year-old toddlers.

The clock was getting closer to eleven and Juri took his dishes to the kitchen counter.

“The present on the table,” his mother reminded, and Juri picked the packet along when going to get his shoes, jacket, beanie, and mittens from the hall. He would need them in the evening even though his way of traveling didn’t require warm clothing.

After checking once more he had everything he needed Juri stepped in front of the fireplace and scooped a handful of Floo Powder from the small bucket that stood on the floor next to the fireplace. He was just about to throw the powder into the fire when the flames flashed bright green and one more brother stepped out from the fire. Juri yelped in surprise and the powder slipped from his fingers, spreading onto the floor.

“Oops, sorry,” Koki said and took his wand from the pocket of his long winter coat. With a one wave of Koki's wand the powder flew back into the bucket. “You going somewhere? On the New Year’s eve!”

“Shintaro invited us to celebrate New Year together in their place,” Juri explained and made a face, “Geez, give one a warning before appearing just like that!”

“Alright, next time I’ll send an owl to tell you I’m going to arrive at ten forty-seven and-” Koki glanced at his watch, “-fifteen seconds.”

“Please do,” Juri chuckled and tilted his head. “Is it okay for you to leave the bar tonight? Don’t you have customers there?” 

Koki laughed and assured his small pub in Hogsmead was in good hands.

“Even a barkeeper sometimes needs his holidays. Tonight is one of those nights. Say, are all your friends of age?” he asked in a low voice after checking their mother wasn’t listening.

“Almost,” Juri said and raised his eyebrows, “Shintaro and Jesse are still sixteen. Why?”

Koki grinned and fished a small paper bag from another pocket of his coat, slipping it into Juri’s pocket instead.

“Don’t tell mum I gave you this, and make sure the underage ones won't get caught,” he whispered and winked at Juri who raised his eyebrows. He knew Koki would never let a minor drink anything but juice and butterbeer in his pub. Apparently he wasn’t that strict about it on his free time.

“Shame on you,” he hissed, “corrupting your innocent little brother _and_ his friends just like that!”

“No, shame on you,” Koki chuckled back, “for being so easily corrupted. Have a nice evening and tell your friends greetings from me!”

“Thanks, bro. Have a nice evening too,” Juri said with a grin. He took a new handful of Floo Powder, threw it into the fire and stepped in when the fire was flaming green.

“Nightingale Crescent,” he said in a loud voice and closed his eyes. He had tried to keep his eyes open for a few times during the traveling but it had always resulted into such a horrible headache that he never wanted to try it again. There was nothing much to see anyway.

When he felt stable ground under his feet again he opened his eyes and smiled at the sight; the familiar living room and all his friends sitting around room, chatting and laughing.

“Juri!” Shintaro cried out and waved his hand from the sofa, “Welcome!”

Juri went to leave his coat and shoes by the hall and came back to the living room, placing the present onto the side table before sat onto the sofa between Hokuto and Taiga.

“Mum said it’s for your whole family,” he explained and pulled his legs onto the sofa too, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Did you guys have a nice Christmas?”

“You should have seen my parents’ faces when I opened the present from you,” Hokuto chuckled, “I don’t think they have ever seen a book that would cry in such a heartbreaking way when you try to put it away into the bookshelf.”

“I hope it wasn’t too much for their humor?” Juri asked with a grin, “The shopkeeper warned me its tears might wet the other books around it.”

“No, it’s okay. It stopped crying immediately when I took it down again.”

“Where do you keep it, then,” Jesse asked curiously.

“Once I took the book in my room it immediately crawled under the bed and stayed there. I think it likes the darkness, and maybe the dust, too. I think it eats dust balls. Sometimes it licks my ankles when I sit on the edge of my bed.”

“Say, Hokuto,” Shintaro said slowly, frowning, “Your room must be full of wizard-made things. How do you keep it all secret? I mean, your family friends must be all muggles. What if someone ever saw something?”

“There’s a spell for that,” Hokuto explained, “When a muggle-born kid gets their letter to Hogwarts, a staff member from the school will always come along. Do you think any grown-up muggle would ever believe the letter is real and not just a prank, unless they saw someone doing magic in front of their eyes?”

“Of course they wouldn't. Hasn’t that been the ministry’s aim for hundreds of years already?”

“Exactly. So there will always be an adult wizard or witch to explain things to the muggle-born kids’ parents, and also to help at arranging things. The first visit to the Diagon Alley and so on. You know, it’s not easy nowadays. In the past one simply sent their kids to Hogwarts and told all the relatives it was a boarding school on the other side of the country. Now everyone has mobile phones and net connection; it’s not easy to just vanish like that anymore. We had to tell our relatives and family friends that I’m going to a very strict and very conservative school that doesn’t allow the students having mobile phones or laptops.”

“What about your friends? What did you tell them when you left your muggle school?” Shintaro asked curiously and Hokuto shrugged.

“The same story. But, you know. When your schoolmate moves away and only comes back for summer holidays… Well, kids forget quickly. I don’t have many muggle friends anymore, to be honest. Kouchi is my only childhood friend left and he’s a half wizard too.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Shintaro said and looked guilty for having made such inconsiderate questions until Hokuto shook his head and smiled.

“Hey, it’s okay. No muggle friends isn't the same as not having friends at all! I do have friends, and they are the best people in the world.”

Everyone looked at each other, nodding quietly at Hokuto’s words, and Juri was quite sure they were all feeling the same: a bit embarrassed yet incredibly happy and thankful at the same time. They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, until Taiga reminded Hokuto he had been supposed to tell them how one kept a room full of a young wizard's school books and other magical things as a secret.

“Oh, right. There’s a spell for that,” Hokuto said, “The witch who came to visit that time cast it on my room. All muggle-borns are taught the same spell later at school so we can reinforce the spell every year. Of course it's illegal for an underage wizard to do magic at home, but the ministry always makes this one exception since it's for the safety of our people."

Everyone shared an understanding nod, and Jesse tilted his head.

"What kind of a spell is it?"

"I’d say it’s something between a Confundus spell and a very mild Muggle-Repelling Charm," Hokuto said and frowned, "It couldn’t be a strong one or my parents wouldn’t be able to step into my room either.”

“I think there’s a similar spell on my room,” Jesse said thoughtfully, “But I don’t know how to do it. I guess my mum has always done it for me. On the other hand, about half of our friends are wizarding people anyway so it's not that much of a problem.”

“Same for my home,” Kouchi said and nodded, “but I’d like to learn the spell too.”

“I’ll show you later,” Hokuto promised.

“Hello boys! Welcome,” Shintaro’s mother suddenly said from the door and everyone turned to answer and thank her for letting them stay overnight. She laughed, told them it was nothing, and asked them to help her with the lunch since there were so many of them.

“Here,” Juri said as he picked the present from the side table and gave it to Shintaro’s mother, “my mum sent it.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said with a warm smile, just like she always did. Juri knew Shintaro’s family liked him but for a moment he wondered if Morimoto-san would think of him so well if she knew how Juri and Shintaro’s relationship had changed just a little time ago.

“Juri and Hokuto, could you please get a full bucket of potatoes and peel them?”

“Sure,” Juri said with a grin. Peeling potatoes might not be the most glorious work in the world but Juri was happy to receive the task anyway - it was almost like a proof that he kind of belonged into the family. At the very least it meant he was a close friend enough to know where the potatoes were stored, having taken care of the chore many times with Shintaro.

“Shintaro, please show the others where the tableware is and set the table together.”

“Yes sir,” Shintaro said with a salute and opened the doors of the huge old cupboard that was full of plates, glasses and other tableware.

“Let’s see, there are the six of us, mum, dad, Ryu and Nacchan; that makes ten in total,” Shintaro counted and pointed at one pile of plates. “Those should be good.” Taiga nodded and took half of the plates, carried them into the table, and then came back to get the rest. Kouchi and Jesse brought the glasses and Shintaro picked the forks and knives from the basket where they were stored.

“Shintaro, dear. Don't you see the tablecloth is dirty? Please change it before spreading the plates.”

“One command at once!” Shintaro yelled back to the kitchen, but took the tablecloth to the laundry basket and went to get a new one from the linen cupboard.

Meanwhile, Juri led Hokuto outside to the cellar of the house.

“Do people still use these,” Hokuto asked, sincerely amazed, “I’ve never seen real food being stored in a cellar - outside of Hogwarts, of course.”

“Where do you store your food then?” Juri asked curiously, “It can’t all fit in your fridges, right?”

“It does though,” Hokuto chuckled, “But my mum likes storing things in the freezer too. We don’t need a cellar like this.”

“ _Weiiiiiird_ ,” Juri teased and Hokuto made a face at him.

“Fuma said the same, after I had spent fifteen minutes explaining him what a fridge is and how it works.”

“How does it, then?” Juri asked and tilted his head, “I mean, how do you change electricity cold or warm depending of the device? Are different colored electricities different temperature too?”

For a few seconds Hokuto was quiet and stared at Juri. Then he started to laugh and shook his head, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

“No, Juri, it’s not electricity that’s warm or cold, or bright or colorful or anything! It’s just like…electricity is like fuel. Or like magic. It’s the thing that makes devices work. I’ve heard there’s actually quite a lot in common between magic and electricity. The both seem to deal with the magnetic fields. Or electricity does, and magic is close enough that it messes up all the magnetic fields and wins every time.”

“But how does it make your fridges cold and ovens hot, and lamps bright?” Juri pressed, still unable to understand how electricity worked even though he had been listening to Hokuto, Kouchi, and Jesse’s conversations for six years already.

“They all have different things inside. Wires, printed circuit boards, electric circuits and such. Fridges also have a system that circulates water inside them. There’s a motor system that makes the water cold enough that it keeps the fridge cold, too. I don’t know how it really works but…”

“Then what about ovens? Is there warm water?”

“Well, no, there’s a thermostat - well, in fact I think there’s a thermostat in a fridge too - anyway, there is a…thing inside the oven. Some kind of a heating element that gets hot when you switch the oven on. It stays hot until the whole oven is hot enough, and then switches off. And when the oven starts to cool down the thermostat reacts and switches the heater on again.”

“Right,” Juri said, even though he hardly understood half of what Hokuto was saying. “What about lamps? And televisions? And Jesse’s father’s navigator? More thermostats?”

“No, um… Lamps have a wire inside the glass. When the electricity warms the wire it starts to glow, and when the temperature is high enough it glows really brightly. Televisions have either plasma displays or liquid-crystal displays… I don’t know much of them so don't ask. And, uh. I think the navigator works on batteries.”

“Batteries are those small finger-sized pieces inside of Shoki’s alarm clock,” Juri said knowingly, “he said he was surprised they work even in Hogwarts but he always keeps cursing how fast the batteries discharge.”

Hokuto nodded and turned away, as if he was looking around the cellar again but Juri managed to see him covering a smile. Whatever, Juri thought. He was a wizard. He didn’t need to understand electricity or the devices that muggles had invented to compensate their lack of magic.

“Did Fuma get it when you explained him?” he asked, even though he didn’t really believe so. Fuma might be smart enough to be a Ravenclaw but he was a wizard-bred brat to the core, just like Juri himself.

“He didn’t,” Hokuto said and made a face, “So, uh. The potatoes?”

Juri opened a big carton sack that stood in the corner and filled up the bucket next to the sack. Then he tied the sack tightly again, and with Hokuto’s help he dragged the bucket up the stairs. Hokuto locked the door of the cellar and they carried the bucket into the house.

“There you are,” Shintaro’s mother said when they stood by the kitchen door again, “I was already wondering if you decided to peel them by hand down there!” She waved her wand and the potatoes flew from the bucket into the sink that was half full of water. Another wave of the wand and the water formed a whirlpool that cleaned the dirt from the potatoes. After rolling in their watery carousel for a minute the potatoes rose, one by one, from the water and a peeling knife hovering in the air peeled them. After that they landed neatly onto the table next to Morimoto-san where she cut the potatoes by hand and threw them into the big pot where carrots and onions were already boiling.

“Half an hour,” she said and gave an accepting nod to the already set table, “Thank you for helping me! You can go now; I’ll call you when the food is ready!”

The boys climbed upstairs to Shintaro’s room.

“Where are Ryutaro and Natsume?” Juri asked, having wondered about it for a while already. The doors to Shintaro’s siblings’ rooms were open and Juri had only seen empty rooms when passing by.

“They left with my dad after he had brought Hokuto and Jesse here. They’re at Diagon Alley, buying rockets and other things for the night,” Shintaro said and closed the door while his friends scattered themselves around the room, each one finding a comfortable place to sit on.

“Finally,” Kouchi sighed once the door was tightly shut, and his smile was wide and eager, “I’ve been dying to tell you!”

“Let me guess,” Taiga said and smirked, “You’ve been outside and played in the snow like a kid - or like a carefree animal.”

“Something like that,” Kouchi said and rocked back and front with Shintaro’s chair next to his table, “No, really, it was amazing! You can’t even imagine it; I could just climb up the upright tree trunks and sit on the top of the trees and look around. I never realized how fun it could be to be such a small animal! And imagine the feeling when you can just run along the branches and _jump_ and land onto the branch of the next tree and the next, and the next one after that…… it’s the best feeling in the world!”

“You only say that because you haven’t seen how the ground looks like when you’re higher than any tree top or house in the whole country,” Taiga said from the edge of the bed where he was sitting, “I’ve always wanted to be able to fly and now that I finally can…”

Taiga didn’t seem to have words to the feeling and Juri understood why, even though he hadn’t had time to try his newest spell again after the first time in the train.

“I still don’t get it though,” he said and crossed his arms on his chest and pouting, “Why is Shintaro a wolf, when I’m _a sheep dog_?” Everyone laughed, and Juri gave himself a mental pat on the back. He liked being able to make his friends laugh.

“Sheep dogs are cute,” Hokuto offered and Juri made a face at him.

“But wolves are cooler,” he complained but grinned right after that, “Even though Shintaro must be the most domesticated wolf to ever have existed.”

“The cleverest one you meant to say,” Shintaro retorted and they laughed again. All but one did. 

Juri suddenly noticed the strain in Jesse’s smile, and felt a bit guilty for whining about his Animagus form, even if it had been only a joke. He really liked his Border Collie, and at least he knew the spell already.

To make up for his tactlessness Juri did his best to change the topic of the conversation as quickly as possible, and when Shintaro’s mother called them for the lunch, Juri purposefully waited until everyone else was in the stairs. Jesse was the last in the room with Juri, and Juri grabbed his best friend’s arm right before he managed to step to the stairs.

“You will learn it,” he said quietly and tightened his grip for a moment, hoping he could somehow make Jesse feel better.

“Will I though?” Jesse asked in a quiet voice, “What if I can’t? I wonder if it’s because I’m just half a wizard.”

“Come on,” Juri said and rolled his eyes, “Look at Hokuto! His parents are like the mugglest muggles to ever have muggled and he can do it!”

“But he’s a Ravenclaw,” Jesse objected, “He’s supposed to learn things quickly.”

“Shintaro is a Hufflepuff and he learned quickly,” Juri chuckled and finally managed to make Jesse smile a little bit.

“Of course he would; his family is full of the wizardest wizards… how was it?”

“Close enough,” Juri said and grinned. “It’ll be all right. I know it will.”

“Hey you two, come on! We’re hungry,” Kouchi called them from the other end of the stairs and Juri and Jesse rushed downstairs.

The meat soup made by Shintaro’s mother was probably the best that Juri had ever tasted. His own mother was a great cook too but soups were not her specialty. Juri and the others ate their stomachs full, mostly talking about school related things so that also Shintaro’s brother and sister could take part into the conversation.

“I’ll need to get ‘Exceeds Expectations’ in at least Arithmancy and Ancient Runes,” Ryutaro sighed and shook his head, “I really don’t know how I’m going to make that happen.”

“Look who’s talking,” Taiga snorted, “The teacher loves you, in case you haven’t noticed, and not without a reason. You’re the best in our Arithmancy class.”

“It’s easy for you to say, not everyone is as my-paced as you are,” Ryutaro defended himself, “I actually have to work for my good grades!”

“Then how do you explain being one of the best in Ancient Runes too?” Hokuto asked with a sly grin and Ryutaro made a face at them.

“Fine, fine. I know I don’t suck at those subjects okay? It’s just that--”

“It’s just that you stress too much,” Shintaro and Natsume said at the same time. Ryutaro glared at his younger siblings, even though he probably hadn’t had much faith in their moral support anyway. Juri chuckled at Ryutaro’s grimace - he knew there was no trusting in his brothers in such a situation either. In a pinch all five Tanaka brothers would be ready to defend each other from any dangers without hesitation, but when it came to everyday things like school they never forgot to tease each other about everything that could possibly be turned into a joke.

Sometimes people were surprised when they saw Juri and his friends. Many thought it would have been more normal, in some way, if Juri had been close friends with Ryutaro who was the same age with him, instead of Ryutaro’s little brother. Juri had sometime wondered about it himself as well but in the end the answer was simple enough that it didn’t really require answering.

It had nothing to do with their ages, really. He liked both brothers well enough, but something had always worked better between Juri and Shintaro than Juri and Ryutaro. Maybe Shintaro’s humor and interests matched with Juri’s better? Juri couldn’t quite explain it. Anyway, at school Ryutaro had his own friends and Shintaro had his own, and Juri belonged to the latter group.

“Why do you need such good grades from them,” Natsume asked, “Do you want to read books written in Runes?”

“I’ve been thinking about trying to get a place in Gringotts after school,” Ryutaro said and frowned, “but I’ll have to find out how to apply for the job.”

“Gringotts,” Natsume asked confusedly, “Aren’t there goblins to take care of everything?”

“Not everything,” her older brother explained, “There are many things that a wizard can do, too. Curse-breaking, and feeding the dragons that guard people’s vaults, and such things.”

“Oh,” Natsume said and leaned against her palm, thinking about it. “I’m not sure I would like it though. I don’t know what I’d like to do after I leave school.”

“You will find out,” her mother said gently and Natsume sighed.

“I guess. What will you guys do after leaving school? You’re going to leave next spring aren’t you?”

“I have a place as an apprentice in the Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley,” Juri said and everyone nodded knowingly. Juri had been talking about it for a while already.

“I'll become a Healer. I’m trying to get into Saint Mungo,” Hokuto said and everyone nodded again.

“Well, I still have another year Hogwarts,” Jesse started, “but I’ve been thinking about Muggle Relations Department in the Ministry.” The information was neither new nor surprising to Juri; he had known for a long time that Jesse was interested in such a thing. However, some of the others looked surprised.

“Muggle Relations Department? What are you going to do there?” Hokuto asked and tilted his head, “Something like Juri’s brother does?”

“Well, maybe? I’m not interested in becoming Obliviator though. And I don’t want to deal with stupid jokes that some ignorant wizards like to arrange for muggles. I was thinking about improving the relationships between the wizard and muggle worlds, things like that.”

“How will that work?” Shintaro asked thoughtfully, “I mean, since there are all those International Statutes of Wizarding Secrecy?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said truthfully, “But I’d like to help wizards to understand better the muggles' way of thinking, at least.”

“Sounds good,” Kouchi said with a laugh, “and quite a lot more ambitious than my dreams.”

“What do you want to do, then,” Natsume asked, openly interested in everyone's plans.

“Ministry work for me too, I guess. I’d like to get a job at the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes but I’ve heard it’s difficult to get a post there. They have to deal with serious things sometimes. Maybe I’ll just become a dishwasher in the Leaky Cauldron, or maybe your brother would hire me, Juri?”

“Don’t say such stupid things,” Juri chuckled, “At least your grades won’t be a hindrance to your plans. You’ll get better work than dishwashing at Koki’s cramped pub.”

“What about you Taiga,” Natsume asked. Her eagerness was cute and Juri could have sworn he wasn’t just imagining when he thought he saw something more than pure academic interest in her eyes when she looked at Taiga.

“Hit Wizard, in the Magical Law Enforcement Squad,” Taiga answered without hesitating and in a second Juri knew his premonition had been right, with how the look in Natsume’s eyes immediately got even more adoring.

“Isn’t it terribly difficult to get in?” she asked and Taiga shrugged.

“I will get in. I have excellent grades and I already checked I fulfill all the other requirements as well.”

The boy’s bluntness and unwavering confidence obviously made an impression into the fourteen-year-old girl and Juri could hardly cover his amused smile. His eyes met with Shintaro’s and from the way Shintaro rolled his eyes Juri concluded he wasn’t the only one who had noticed Natsume’s crush to their friend.

“Oi, little sister,” Shintaro complained, “why aren’t you asking me what I want to do after school?”

“Oh, but you won’t be leaving the school yet are you? Besides, why would I want to choose the same occupation as you do?” she asked and made a face, obviously annoyed that her older brother had distracted the conversation away from Taiga.

“I want to become a teacher,” Shintaro announced, ignoring his sister, and everyone, even his parents, raised their eyebrows in surprise. That was new information more than anything else.

“Care of Magical Creatures?” Juri suggested, everyone knew it was Shintaro’s favorite subject.

“I had been thinking about that, too, but lately I’ve become interested in Transfigurations, and I think I am good enough that I could become a teacher one day.”

“Why not?” Jesse said and was the first of the people around the table who smiled widely and nodded, “You’re right. I’ve never thought about it but you _are_ good at Transfigurations. Remember that toad episode? That was really impressing!”

“A toad episode?” Shintaro’s father took part into the conversation for the first time, “What toad episode?”

Shintaro threw a murderous glance at Jesse who grinned sheepishly, and then smiled at his father widely enough that everyone could see the fakeness of the expression.

“It’s nothing, really. I was just… practicing. Animal Transfigurations, that’s all.”

“Toads,” Ryutaro said slowly before the understanding spread on his face and he looked up at his little brother. “Shintaro. Was it _you_ who changed every owl at the school Owlery into toads?”

“Shintaro?” his mother asked, not sounding necessarily angry, but in a tone that demanded for an answer and accepted no objections.

“Well, I…” Shintaro stammered, “Uh, it was an accident? I only meant to practice with our family owl, and I was going to change it back immediately. It… didn’t work. Or it kind of did. The spell somehow got spread to the whole Owlery. But it was nothing serious! No owls were hurt, even when they started to slip down from their perches; and the Transfiguration teacher had no problem at changing them all back.”

“Did you apologize properly,” his mother asked nervously and Shintaro rolled his eyes.

“Of course I did, I…”

“Son,” his father said in a serious tone, “Are you saying you cast a Transfiguration spell on a whole tower of owls and each one’s Transfiguration was complete? When did you do that?”

“Uh, last winter, before Easter Holidays,” Shintaro said hesitantly, and Juri understood his feeling. Both the tone of Shintaro’s father’s voice and the look on his face were unreadable. He also saw Jesse’s expression and guessed Jesse was already regretting saying anything at all. Jesse hated causing harm to his friends, and a disciplinary family hearing in the lunch table was definitely something that counted as harm.

“That’s great!” Shintaro’s father suddenly said and Shintaro’s eyes widened in surprise. “Such a demanding spell, and you were still merely a fifth-grader! I’m proud of you! You really might have what it demands to become a teacher!”

His pleased reaction was a happy surprise to everyone, most of all to Shintaro who basked in the warmth of his father’s praises and smiled in a way that made Juri want to smile too. He was happy and proud for his boyfriend, even though he couldn’t say it in public just like that. He made a mental note so he would remember to say it to Shintaro later. He was determined to catch a small moment with just the two of them alone before the night anyway.

“It was very interesting to hear about your plans,” Shintaro’s father said and smiled at each one of them, “Treasure your dreams, and eventually you will definitely reach them.”

After the lunch the boys pulled on their shoes, jackets, beanies, and mittens and rushed out into the snowy whiteness. They had been a bit worried, afraid of Shintaro’s siblings wanting to join them but the fear was unnecessary. As soon as the lunch table had been cleaned, Natsume went to her room to change her clothes, came back to announce she had promised to meet her friend in afternoon, and vanished into the green Floo Powder flames. Ryutaro simply preferred staying inside so the six boys ran out of the house without other people, just like they had wished.


	6. Chapter 6

The Morimoto family’s house was a pretty detached house with two floors and many windows. It looked a lot like any ordinary muggle house in the same town, despite the strangely tall chimney and the bright green color of the walls. The house was located by the side of a small hill, right in the edge of an old forest. The nearest neighbors were half a kilometer away and the town center was behind a walk of twenty minutes.

They waded through the snowy back yard into the forest, and kept walking until they were far enough that Shintaro was sure his family members wouldn’t be able to see or hear them even if someone happened to come out of the house.

“I think it’s safe here,” Shintaro said, grinned, and changed. It felt weird and exciting at the same time to see a wolf in the deep of the forest like that and Juri was happy it was just Shintaro, not the real predator.

Hokuto didn’t waste more time, changing right after Shintaro. He took a few steps in the soft white substance, marveling the way it carried some of his weight. Then he made a big leap and crouched low enough that he vanished into the deep snow. He seemed to really enjoy himself.

Taiga changed too, but the transfiguration wasn’t quite as graceful as everyone knew he had wished. Unlike Hokuto’s wide paws Taiga’s thin toes didn’t help him to stay on the snow at all, and when he jumped into the snow he soon found himself half buried in it, only his spread wings keeping him on the surface.

“Need help?” Kouchi asked and offered his hand for Taiga who eagerly reached his leg from the snow and grabbed the boy’s sleeve with his claws. As soon as Kouchi lifted him up from the snow Taiga flew up to some branch of the nearest tree, shook his wings and tail and fluffed up all his feathers for a moment, probably to warm himself after the surprise snow bath.

Learning from Taiga’s mistake, Kouchi trampled the snow under his feet before changing. The small squirrel in his grey winter fur didn’t mind the coldness of the snow at all, and easily jumped around, following the big footprints of his friends.

Juri hesitated a moment, knowing how Jesse felt about the matter. He shifted closer to his best friend and gently nudged Jesse’s arm with his elbow.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, keeping his eyes at the others who were already finding out about all the new ways of enjoying the wintry forest.

“Yeah,” Jesse said and managed to offer Juri a small smile, “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a big boy.”

“Even big boys feel lonely sometimes,” Juri pointed out and Jesse shrugged

“I guess. Thank you. But I really meant it. Just change already; I know you want to.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Juri insisted even though Jesse had guessed right.

“You aren’t going to flee into the forest right after changing, are you?” Jesse asked and smiled a little, “Come on, I want to play with the most magical sheep dog in the world!”

Juri wasn’t sure if Jesse’s was praising or insulting him but he didn’t mind either one. Instead, he obeyed like a well-trained puppy should, and concentrated on thinking about the black-and-white fur, four paws, the waving tail and the endless stream of sensory perceptions that being a dog caused.

The soft snow was cool under Juri's paws but not actually cold. It smelled of winter and forest, and Juri could even feel the faint scent of the frozen ground when pushing his nose deep into the snow. The others had already vanished deeper into the forest but he could still hear them as if they had been standing right next to him; Taiga’s sharp cry and Kouchi’s short screeches, mixed with Shintaro’s howls and Hokuto’s husky call that was much alike to domesticated cats’ meows but notably lower and deeper.

“You’re an adorable dog, did you know that?” Jesse said and crouched next to Juri, scratching him behind his ears and laughing softly when Juri immediately tilted his head towards the touch and answered with a whiny noise, waving his tail rapidly. He couldn’t help himself; the scratching always felt almost heavenly good.

“Come on, let’s go to the others,” Jesse said and got up again, “Seek, boy!”

Juri nodded and started to trot towards the noises further away. He would have found them even without hearing them though, with the all messed-up trails in the snow and their very distinctive smells hanging in the air. Juri found it interesting that despite the others’ animal forms he still liked two smells the best. Shintaro’s, for obvious reasons but also because the scent of the wolf was familiar enough to Juri’s canine sense of smell. The other pleasing smell was Jesse’s whose individual scent Juri had always liked and it got even better when his senses were heightened like they were at the moment.

While Jesse slowly waded forward, following the trails in the snow, Juri ran in a circle around him, enjoying the ease of running like that and wanting to make sure Jesse wouldn’t feel lonely.

On a sudden whim Juri threw himself into the ground and rolled around in the snow, enjoying himself to the fullest.

“Juri, catch!” Jesse cried out and threw a small ball of snow into the air. The sight made Juri’s dog instincts soar in excitement when he locked his eyes into the snowball and sprang after it, catching it into his mouth. However, since the temperature was well under zero, the fragile ball made of frosty snow immediately broke in his teeth, turning back into separate snowflakes. Juri shook his head with a bark. Jesse laughed and made a new snowball to throw.

As they continued their silly game Juri wondered if this was how his own Chihuahua back at home always felt when he played with her? She was always eager to play with him, always waved her tail and cuddled close when Juri gave her his attention, and suddenly Juri understood why she always loved his attention so much. Jesse was playing with him and scratching him whenever he was close enough; he was offering his his full attention to Juri all the time; how could he _not_ love the boy for that? 

Despite all its complexity and intelligence, the dog’s mind was very simple after all.

Talk about people he loved, Juri thought and glanced across the opening in the forest. They had found the other four who still kept playing in the snow. Juri barked when he saw the others and Shintaro immediately looked up, answering with another eager bark before he ran to Juri and tackled him on the snow.

The wolf was much bigger than Juri’s Border Collie form and for a moment Juri felt quite intimidated when lying on his back under the big animal, and his instincts quickly signaled for an instant surrender. He whined quietly and nudged Shintaro’s front legs with his paws. Shintaro answered with a soft growl and leaned down to lick Juri’s nose until Jesse coughed loudly. Juri startled and wriggled himself free, glancing around to see if the others had noticed their short moment of affection. They had, but apparently they hadn't seen anything weird in it as no-one questioned it in any way.

Juri barked at Shintaro again and happily realized he understood Shintaro’s answer better than Kouchi and Taiga’s screeches or Hokuto’s mewls. Shintaro seemed to be on the same wavelength with him as he happily waved his tail and turned around, jumping towards Jesse at the same time with Juri. Jesse couldn’t hold his ground against the two strong animals and fell down to the snow, laughing and hugging his friends as they thoroughly licked his face instead.

“Eww, guys you’re drooling,” Jesse complained but he was still smiling - for a short moment. The smile turned into a surprised yell when Hokuto attacked him from behind and the poor boy got the snow wash of his life. “And you’re heavy too!” he continued when he finally managed to sit up again, Juri and Shintaro sitting on his lap and Hokuto leaning against his shoulders with his front paws.

“Yes, yes I know you two aren't,” Jesse said when Kouchi jumped from the tree on his knee, and Taiga landed onto the tip of his shoe.

It was good to see Jesse smiling like that, Juri thought and lowered his head on the boy's lap. He wished Jesse, too, would learn the spell quickly, even though Jesse being a mere human clearly didn’t stop them from playing together.

“Better like this?” Hokuto suddenly asked and Juri glanced up to see the other boy’s smiling face behind Jesse’s shoulders.

“You were lighter as a lynx,” Jesse teased, but he did seem to be happy for Hokuto changing back.

Hokuto made a face, changed again, and scooped a full pawful of snow on Jesse’s face, meowing lowly, and everyone laughed in their own more or less human ways.

They stayed in the forest until everyone started to feel a bit cold despite the warm fur that most of them had and very hungry, and they decided they had better to start walking towards Shintaro’s home again.

“What if someone sees the footprints?” Kouchi asked when they were standing by the back yard of the Morimoto house, all in their human selves again. Shintaro shook his head nonchalantly.

“No-one ever goes that deep into the forest and even if they did the footprints will soon be covered again. See, it’s already snowing.”

Shintaro was right; small white flakes were falling from the slowly darkening sky, and Juri couldn't help a soft smile when he watched some flakes landing on Shintaro's face and melting there.

-

“There you are,” Shintaro’s mother said when the six boys finally dragged themselves into the house again, "I was already wondering if you were going to come back at all."

The dinner (boiled potatoes and chicken sauce accompanied with a huge bowl of green salad) was as delicious as the lunch had been and after having eaten their stomachs full the six boys wished they could just apparate back to Shintaro's room instead of having to climb upstairs where they hung around the same way as earlier; talking, joking, laughing, and enjoying the blessed freedom of the long Christmas holiday. 

“Ryu, what’s the time?” Shintaro hollered and knocked on the thin wall between his and Ryutaro's rooms.

“It’s half past seven and you don’t need to shout inside the house,” his mother yelled from downstairs, “your brother is not at home.”

Juri couldn't help grinning smugly at Shintaro's confused frown when the boy leaned back against the headboard of his bed, presumably trying to remember if he had seen Ryutaro leaving after the dinner. Juri was secretly happy about it, knowing he was guilty for Shintaro having been too distracted to pay much attention on anything but him during the last half an hour. 

Jesse would scold him later but it had been way too funny to brush his feet against Shintaro’s every now and then and see the boy trying to hide his smile, and keep the connection between their gazes just a second too long every time their eyes met.

It was Shintaro’s fault anyway, he reasoned and rolled around to lie on his stomach instead, leaning his chin against his palms and trying to look like he was actually listening to Hokuto and Kouchi's debate about some muggle world thing. Shintaro’s mere closeness made him want to do all the stupid things that left him feeling excited and warm all over. Usually he wasn’t very fond of public demonstrations of affection but _secret_ actions were a whole other thing.

It was still a few hours until midnight, and to kill time the boys decided to make some new year’s resolutions.

“I will not be late from the lessons again,” Hokuto solemnly promised, emitting bursts of laughter from his friends.

“That one will be broken before the first day of February,” Kouchi pointed out but Hokuto didn’t seem to be bothered.

“It’s the attempt that counts,” he declared with a serious face.

“Is it a real attempt if you don’t even believe in it yourself?” Taiga asked. Hokuto made a face and threw him with a worn t-shirt that happened to lay around on Shintaro's floor.

“Have some faith in me!”

“Very rarely,” Taiga chuckled and dodged the flying bundle of fabric, “I will--”

“You will be nice to my sister,” Shintaro said with a grimace and Taiga raised his eyebrows in confusion.

“What kind of a resolution is that?”

“Oh, come on. You cannot be that blind. You must have noticed she’s totally in love with you,” Shintaro snorted. “I just want you to be nice to her.”

“I don’t think I’m feeling the same way though,” Taiga said apologetically and Shintaro shook his head quickly.

“No, no. I didn’t mean that. Just, in case she'd actually confess to you. No matter what your answer is, I want you to be nice to her.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t be?” Taiga asked, looking, if possible, even more confused.

“Nothing,” Shintaro said and shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure. Because, you know. I’ll beat up anyone who ever hurts my little sister’s feelings on purpose.”

“Relax,” Taiga chuckled, “It’s okay. I promise.”

“Now make a real new year’s resolution,” Hokuto demanded but Taiga shook his head.

“Nope. One resolution per year. Try again next year.”

“I will learn the Animagus spell,” Jesse promised with a confirming nod, and everyone hummed approvingly. It was a good resolution, definitely.

“I will study hard to get at least three Outstandings from the N.E.W.T.s,” Juri said, hesitating just a little bit. He wasn’t sure if he could actually reach such a goal but it wouldn't hurt him to try, right? He knew he would need every single little thing, including silly New Year's resolutions, that would motivate him to study before the final exams in Hogwarts.

Shintaro and Kouchi had to think about their resolutions for a while. In the end Kouchi settled on the same target with Juri, and Shintaro promised he would do his best to become a more studious person in general.

“How is that measured though?” Jesse wondered.

“I’ll know next year,” Shintaro reasoned and everyone laughed again.

“By the way,” Juri suddenly said, “Shouldn't we spread out our beds now that we’re still awake? It’s always so annoying to try making a bed when you’re tired enough that you'd be ready to sleep on the bare floor.”

“You've got a point,” Shintaro said and nodded, “Come on guys, help me. We have enough spare mattresses and pillows and blankets but I’ll never get them all up here alone.”

As one could expect, in their hands even the simplest task ended up into a heated pillow fight.

“Eat feathers,” Juri hollered and waved his wand so that the pillows in his command crashed right into Jesse and Taiga’s faces.

“Unfair!” Jesse complained, “You know I can’t do magic outside of the school yet!”

“That’s why you should join together with someone who can,” Taiga said with a wide grin, “ _Accio_ , pillows!”

Juri couldn’t do much when the pillows suddenly speeded towards Taiga, and then back to him on Taiga's command. He ducked and got help from Hokuto who sent a well-aimed Jelly-Fingers curse towards the hand in which Taiga was holding his wand. Taiga managed to avoid the curse that hit Jesse instead, and the boy’s grip on the mattress he had been lifting from the closet got loose when his fingers suddenly started to wiggle as if they were made of something very soft and elastic.

“Oops, sorry,” Hokuto cried out, laughing aloud until Kouchi’s Tongue-Tying Curse hit him straight on his back, and his next words were an incoherent mess of meaningless syllables.

“Wingardium Leviosa,” Juri hollered to the three mattresses left in the closet. They levitated through the air, knocking both Kouchi and Shintaro from their feet at the same time.

“Petrificus Totalus,” Kouchi yelled from under the mattress and pointed his wand towards one of the blankets that had still been untouched and nicely folded on the floor next to the closet. It was actually a really cool spell, Juri thought, even though it working well meant that he soon found himself tightly wrapped up inside the blankets.

“How did you even do that?” he asked in awe, and Kouchi shrugged with a wide grin.

“Haven’t you ever tried to combine two different spells together? You should!” he said and only barely avoided Taiga’s Hair-thickening Charm. Instead of him the spell hit on Shintaro’s dog that, to his own misfortune, had come to see what all the noise was about.

“Sorry,” Taiga cried out to Shintaro who didn't mind at all. In fact, he was laughing aloud at the poor dog’s confusion when his fur suddenly started to grow until he looked more like a very fat Afghan hound instead of the Akita that he really was.

Getting even more heated by every minute, the pillow war continued until across all the laughing and spell-casting they heard one, much louder voice.

“Expelliarmus!” Shintaro’s mother yelled and caught all six wands in her hand when they flew to her from the boys’ hands and pockets.

“Mum, why did you take mine, too,” Shintaro whined, “I can’t use it anyway!”

“So you won’t need to carry it around with you, my dear,” his mother said in a dangerously pleasant voice. “Now, collect the beddings and carry them upstairs nicely, and you might get your wands back before next year.”

Finally, after lots of waiting and playful quarreling the clock hit eleven and everyone moved downstairs to dress into their outdoor clothes. Shintaro’s father went out to prepare their rockets in the back yard, and Shintaro's siblings came back home almost at the same time, determined not to miss the turn of the year.

“Did your father muggle-repel them?” Juri asked at the back yard, eyeing at the rockets that were very obviously wizard stuff.

“Yeah, he does it every year,” Shintaro answered, “We wouldn’t want to explain the size of those to any muggle who might wander anywhere close. Not that many people ever do. It seems like our neighbors think we’re a weird family full of slightly twisted people.”

Juri knew what Shintaro meant by having to explain things but Hokuto was sincerely confused, it being the first time ever for him to spend New Year away from home. He had only seen muggle fireworks, and while he knew enough about the magical world to guess wizard fireworks would probably be bigger and more stunning, he couldn’t quite imagine it without seeing them first, no matter how colorful Juri and Shintaro’s descriptions of wizard fireworks were.

He found out soon enough, as Shintaro’s father fired the first rockets. They shot high up on the sky, whistling and exploding into thousands of sparkling stars. There were rockets of different colors and shapes; some exploded with funny noises while the sparkles of others formed small three-dimensional animal characters that hovered in the air and played around the people at the yard. Juri smiled when a tiny golden firework rabbit landed next to him, wriggled its nose, and scratched its ears with its hind leg.

“So this is why we need muggle repel spells on these,” Shintaro said to Hokuto who let out an agreeing hum, followed by an amazed gasp when the next rocket exploded with a loud crack and several whistles.

“Two minutes until midnight!” Shintaro’s father announced and everyone immediately turned to look up into the sky again, waiting eagerly for the time to pass. 

“One minute!”

Juri glanced aside, noticed Shintaro was standing close enough, and quietly reached to take Shintaro’s hand. The boy looked over at him in surprise, but smiled anyway and didn’t let go. Once again Juri felt warm all over despite the coldness that had already started to creep through his clothes.

“Seven, six, five, four,” Morimoto-san counted, and Juri tightened his grip on Shintaro’s hand.

Everyone waited for three more seconds, their eyes following the huge rocket that surprisingly made no noise at all when flying up into the sky. One more second, and the sound of the huge explosion was loud and deep enough that Juri really felt the energy in his body. A bright ball of light broke into sparkles that slowly fluttered down on them like golden snowflakes, staying lit even when they hit the ground.

“Happy New Year!” Juri, Shintaro, Jesse, Hokuto, Taiga, Kouchi, and Shintaro’s family members yelled all at the same time.

Juri turned to look at Shintaro, wanting to repeat the words just for him, but he didn’t manage to even open his mouth before suddenly Taiga’s arm was around his waist, Hokuto’s cheek warm against his, and Jesse and Kouchi’s smiles were shining in front of him. In the middle of the spontaneous group hug Juri lost his hold on Shintaro’s hand but the way their friends accidentally squeezed them together in the middle of the hug pretty much compensated for the loss, and when their eyes met at some point, Juri decided he didn’t need to say anything after all.

An hour later they stumbled into Shintaro’s room, changed into their pajamas and crawled to their beds. They were ready to sleep but not by any means planning to do so in a few more hours.

“I have a surprise,” Juri announced with a sly smile and lifted up the small bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky.

“Wow, where did you get that?” Hokuto asked and rolled across his mattress to take a closer look at the bottle.

“At least someone in my family knows how to pamper a little brother,” Juri grinned.

“Unfair, again,” Shintaro pointed out even though everyone had already gotten their wands back from his mother.

“Pfft,” Juri snorted, “You can’t buy it but it doesn’t mean you can’t try it. I was already given a small taste six years ago when my oldest brother got married!”

“Did you like it?” Taiga asked with a lopsided smile and Juri had to admit the taste hadn't been especially pleasant.

“But I was much smaller that time,” he defended himself, “I didn’t like many other things either, that time. I'm sure it's worth trying again. Cheers, everyone!”

The bottle traveled from hand to hand, and only Taiga could take his sip without making a crumpled face, unlike his friends who made pained whines and weird faces as soon as the strong liquid touched their tongues.

“Why do people like it so much?” Jesse asked, his face still scrunched into a displeased grimace as he pursed his lips, probably trying to gather some spit in his mouth to rinse the burning taste from his mouth. At least that was what Juri was doing after one notably bigger snifter.

“I don’t know,” he said and laughed at Hokuto who willed himself to take another sip and shuddered violently after swallowing, “But they say it warms you up when you’re cold.”

“They also say it makes you feel more courageous,” Kouchi said and grinned, and Juri didn’t really doubt his words. He _was_ feeling braver than usually, especially when he looked at Shintaro. No matter if it was the alcohol's effect or something else.

He let his gaze wander across the boy’s body; from his fluffy hair to his face that looked much more mature than his age would have implied, across his arms and legs that the loose t-shirt and sleeping shorts didn’t manage to cover. Juri wondered how it would feel like to run his fingers across Shintaro’s arms and slip them under the hem of his shirt to feel the warm skin of his back, maybe pressing closer to feel other places as well and kissing his neck and shoulders and lips and whichever place Shintaro would let him.

Fine, maybe it wasn’t the firewhisky, Juri thought and grinned at himself; maybe it was just his hormones.

Either way, he was happy there were so many people around the two of them. Without them he would probably have jumped on Shintaro and done things that he barely dared to think about. At the same time he was a bit frustrated about the situation. He wanted to touch Shintaro _right now_ , even just a little bit. He wanted to lean against the boy and cuddle by his side but he couldn’t.

They really should tell the others about their dating, he thought with a sigh. Maybe things would be easier then, supposing everyone would be cool about it.

Would they? Juri looked around the room and studied his friends, trying to remember if he had ever heard them saying anything that would give him a hint of their possible reactions.

In the end he didn’t believe for one second that Hokuto, Taiga, or Kouchi would ever start hating them for such a thing, and somehow, he realized, he trusted in them too. In fact, it was a good thing Shintaro was the one Juri was dating. If not, Shintaro would absolutely have been the one whose reaction Juri would have feared the most. Now that he didn’t have such a problem and he didn’t need to worry about Jesse either, he was feeling rather good about it. Yes, he would talk about it with Shintaro as soon as possible, and after that they would tell the other three. They deserved to know anyway.

Jesse was the first one to fall asleep, curled up between Juri and Kouchi. Taiga followed his example and soon Kouchi was asleep, too. Shintaro fought against the sleep for a while but eventually he stopped answering Juri’s questions and Juri smiled when he covered Shintaro with his own blanket. (He didn't mind at all Shintaro sleeping next to him instead of his own bed.) For some reason Juri himself didn’t feel especially tired even though the hands of an old alarm clock on Shintaro’s night stand pointed at four in the morning.

On Shintaro’s other side Hokuto was still up, leaning against Shintaro’s desk. Juri had left his wand on the edge of he desk, bringing some light into the dark room from its beaming tip, but Hokuto's face was in shadow and Juri couldn't see his expression.

“Aren’t you tired?” he asked and frowned when Hokuto shrugged absent-mindedly. “Are you all right? Too much firewhisky?”

“It’s not that,” Hokuto chuckled and glanced at the bottle that Taiga had lifted up to Shintaro’s bookshelf so no-one would knock it over. "I just. I don’t know what to do."

“About what?” Juri asked conversationally, and only barely managed to stop his hand from moving to brush Shintaro’s hair as he waited for Hokuto to continue.

“What would you do if there was someone,” Hokuto started, hesitating, “I mean, if you thought there was someone who liked you. What would you do?”

Feeling slightly surprised Juri raised his eyebrows. Hokuto didn’t usually come across as a person who would be bothered about such things.

“Well, I guess I would ask them about it,” Juri said, remembering well how he had felt before confessing to Shintaro. “But I guess that’s a bit awkward if you’re not quite sure about their feelings?”

“Exactly,” Hokuto sighed and rubbed his eyes drowsily, “Why must everything be so complicated?”

“I don’t know,” Juri chuckled, “Do you like her?”

“Her? Uh, well. I don’t know. That’s the other problem I guess? And I’m not sure which one is the bigger one.”

“Do you feel good when she’s around? Do you want to smile at everything she says? Do you try to act cool around her to make sure she’ll see you at your best?”

Hokuto was quiet for such a long time that Juri wondered if he had fallen asleep in the middle of their conversation but finally Hokuto took a shaking breath and nodded.

“I… I think I do like him,” he said. “Her.” The correction was too hasty to be believable and Juri narrowed his eyes.

“Him?” he asked and almost felt sorry for Hokuto who suddenly looked like a child who had gotten busted in the middle of doing something forbidden.

“Him,” Hokuto finally confirmed in a very small voice.

“It’s okay,” Juri said quickly, feeling shocked and glad at the same time, only hardly able to wrap his mind around the fact that Hokuto was going through the same things in his mind as Juri was. “I don’t mind.”

“You don’t?” Hokuto asked, and his surprised relief made Juri feel awfully guilty. He should say it; he should tell Hokuto about himself and Shintaro. He should let Hokuto know he wasn’t alone with his not-so-straight feelings towards someone. Yet he didn’t know how to start.

“You like him, right? And you think he likes you too?” Juri said instead, knowing exactly how Hokuto was feeling right at the moment. “You know, I think you should tell him. If there’s a possibility that you two could be happy together… I think you should grab on that possibility.”

“I don’t know,” Hokuto said slowly and Juri chuckled, reaching across Shintaro to nudge Hokuto’s shoulder with his fist.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to hurry about it. Just make sure you 'll get him before someone else does!”

Hokuto nodded and smiled a bit, clearly half asleep already. With a wordless agreement the both of them lay down and searched a good position on their places.

“Juri,” a soft voice came out from under Hokuto’s blanket, “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Juri murmured and glanced up to the table where his wand was still offering light to the otherwise dark room.

“ _Nox_ ,” he whispered the wand and the light went off.

-

The next thing Juri heard was quiet laughing and talking around him. The lightness of the room when he opened his eyes a bit meant revealed that it was morning already, but he didn’t want to wake up quite yet. It was too warm and comfortable and he snuggled closer to Shintaro’s familiar scent, pressing his nose against Shintaro’s chest and slightly tightening his hold around the boy’s waist. The soft puffs of Shintaro’s breath against his hair were comforting enough that Juri almost slipped back into sleep.

“Juri,” Jesse suddenly said and after his call Juri heard Kouchi’s disappointed voice.

“No, don’t wake him up! They were so cute!”

In a second Juri’s drowsy mind connected the pieces of information his senses offered him and he jerked up, looking around and seeing his friends around him, all smiling widely.

“I, uh…” he started but didn’t manage to finish his sentence when Shintaro emitted a whiny noise and shifted closer to Juri, wrapping his fingers tightly around his wrist.

“Adorable,” Taiga pointed out and Juri bit his lower lip, shaking Shintaro’s shoulder until the boy reluctantly opened his eyes.

“Shin,” Juri said in a low voice and made his decision right there, “Wake up. There’s something we’ll need to tell them.”

In the end everyone took the news quite well. Taiga was surprised but simply wished them luck while Kouchi was mostly shocked about never having noticed anything. Hokuto congratulated them as well, and while the expression on his face was by no means disapproving, there was a hint of something that Juri didn’t quite get. Yet he thought he knew what it was. 

His guess proved true later, when Shintaro’s mother invited everyone downstairs to have breakfast.

Before Juri managed to follow the others, Hokuto grabbed his arm and wouldn’t let him go before the door of Shintaro’s room was securely shut again.

“Why didn’t you say anything last night?” Hokuto demanded, looking both hurt and confused, and Juri looked down, feeling slightly ashamed by his behavior.

“I didn’t know how to,” he said quietly, avoiding Hokuto’s eyes and cursing his inability to talk honestly whenever it was about serious things. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that I’m angry at you,” Hokuto said, equally embarrassed by his strong reaction. “I just. I realized last night… I have a crush on a boy. I realized I’m… gay. I’ve only ever liked girls you know.”

“Technically, liking both makes you a bi instead of being gay,” Juri pointed out. He couldn’t help it. He _needed_ a joke, even a lame one, behind which to hide.

“Not my point,” Hokuto murmured, completely unamused.

“Sorry.”

“I was afraid,” Hokuto admitted and Juri felt amazed at how easily Hokuto could say such a thing. “Of being the only… only--”

“The only weird one,” Juri finished his sentence with a small smile.

“That’s not what I was going to say but as you wish to express it,” Hokuto said and made a face.

“It’s okay,” Juri repeated his earlier words, “It’s okay to be weird like this, and you’re not the only one. Don’t worry.”

Hokuto really seemed not to worry, Juri noticed after a while when he followed the boy’s actions and expressions in the breakfast table. Hokuto kept on joking and laughing like he always did, and there were absolutely no visible signs of the insecurities he had shown to Juri during the past night and morning. Juri supposed he didn’t need to feel bad about anything if Hokuto didn’t.


	7. Chapter 7

Way too soon the Christmas holiday was over, and all the young wizards and witches had to return to school. Juri didn’t mind school and lessons per se - in fact he liked them - but he would easily have lived without all the homework. As the seventh-year-students soon noticed, every teacher in the school seemed to think that doing lots of homework was the key to excellent N.E.W.T. results, and many afternoons and evenings passed while the students sat in the Great Hall, the school library, or the tables of their respective common rooms, buried under exhausting piles of books and parchments.

Juri sat on his own bed in the seventh-year boys’ bedroom. It wasn’t very late yet so most people were still in the Common Room and he had come to the conclusion that the dormitory might be the most silent and peaceful place he could find at the moment. He yawned and stretched his arms, and moved the Potions text book aside. Before the Potions homework he had already cleared the Astronomy and Herbology exercises, and he still had things to do. Maybe he’d manage to finish everything before midnight if he worked really hard.

He was halfway through the homework of Care of Magical Creatures when he heard a quiet knock on the window. He looked up and saw an unknown owl.

“Where did you come from?” he asked when reaching to let the bird in. A closer look at the owl’s feet showed that she was bringing a message to him and, as the small bracelet on her ankle revealed, she was one of the many owls that belonged to the school.

_“Can you come downstairs?”_

Juri frowned when he recognized the handwriting even from the four words. Why did Shintaro write to him? Why didn’t he just ask him in the daytime when Juri was around anyway? Shintaro knew Juri had a lot to do; why would he ask such a thing right now? Juri looked at the mountain of things on his bed and thought about all the things he hadn’t had time to finish yet. He sighed and felt a strong urge to send a negative answer. The owl would have been free to go but she was still sitting at the foot end of Juri’s bed, looking at him with her big yellow eyes.

“Stop it,” he snapped to the owl, “It’s not my fault that I can’t go. Stop looking so accusative!”

The owl didn’t move an inch and Juri grumpily decided to ignore her.

He wondered what Shintaro wanted of him.

Juri shrugged, dipped his quill into the ink bottle and continued his essay about the nutrition of Hippocamps. There had been something about it in the book he had borrowed from the library on the day before, where was it again? He reached towards the book and almost knocked off the ink bottle when the owl leaned in to peck the back of his hand.

“Ouch!” Juri cried out and quickly pulled his hand away. “What was that for?” he asked, glaring at the bird that hooted innocently and looked away.

What if Shintaro had something important he wanted to talk about?

It couldn’t be, Juri chuckled, still rubbing his aching hand when reaching for the book about magical underwater creatures. He had seen Shintaro in the Great Hall by the dinnertime. He would have talked to Juri then if there was something so urgent.

“Hippocampus, hippocampus…” Juri murmured as he ran his fingertip across the H section of the table of contents of the book. There, he saw the word he was looking for, opened the right page and leaned back against his pillows, engrossing into the text.

What if Shintaro--

Juri slammed the book shut and took a deep breath. There was no way he could concentrate on his homework, not when the only thing he could think about was Shintaro.

“Fine, I’ll go,” Juri sighed to the owl when he scribbled a quick “yes” under Shintaro’s own message and sent the bird out of the window.

He glanced at the clock and the stuff on his bed and pondered if he should clean the stuff up or leave it all there. He would be able to continue if Shintaro didn’t need to talk long. On the other hand, Kento and Shoki might come to bed on any moment, and the peace of the bedroom would be gone. In the end he decided to compromise and collected all the other books and parchments, finished and awaiting, away but left the ones that he needed for the Care of Magical Creatures homework, hoping he could at least finish that one before going to sleep.

Only in the staircase he realized he didn’t know where Shintaro wanted to see him and the former annoyance flashed through his mind again. The castle was huge; how would he ever find Shintaro when he didn’t know where to look for? He ignored the small voice in his head that reminded him there weren’t that many places where Shintaro really would go to, especially when he hadn’t specified his whereabouts at all.

Be that as it may, Juri stomped through the common room his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, trying to look as grumpy as possible so no-one would even consider stopping him on his way. He just wanted to quickly find Shintaro, ask what was wrong, and then come back to the Gryffindor tower and finish his homework.

He stepped through the door behind the painting of the Fat Lady and bumped right away into Shintaro. Well, one problem cleared from the list.

“What is it?” Juri asked. He had been really grumpy when coming down from the dormitories, but something in Shintaro’s appearance made him calm down. It was as if the other boy was afraid of something. Afraid of him? “Hey, Shin?”

“Hi,” Shintaro said quietly and hesitated for a moment. “Uh, can we go somewhere where the whole school isn’t listening?”

“Sure,” Juri said with a frown. Suddenly he felt bad for having ignored Shintaro’s message for such a long time. Had the boy been waiting him in the corridor for the whole time?

They found an empty classroom and Juri raised his eyebrows when Shintaro locked the door after them.

“Just so no-one will walk in,” Shintaro said but there was still this weird apologetic undertone in his voice.

“Are you all right?” Juri asked, sitting down on one of the desks and frowning when Shintaro didn’t answer right away. “Come on, I’m getting worried,” he said pleadingly and Shintaro swallowed for a few times before he finally looked up into Juri’s eyes.

“I just... Do you still like me?”

“What?” Juri asked, almost sure he must have heard something wrong. “Why wouldn’t I? Of course I do!”

“Well, good. It's just that you never have time for me,” Shintaro said in a tiny voice, looking away again, and he looked so fragile and lonely when standing there in the middle of the floor that Juri’s heart twisted painfully. “You hardly even talk to me.”

“I do talk to you,” Juri insisted and took a deep breath. He did, right?

“But you don’t,” Shintaro said softly and looked up again. “You barely greet me and smile even less than that. Whenever I see you, there is also a pile of books that are more important than I am.”

Despite the harsh words Shintaro’s tone wasn’t accusing at all, Juri realized in a shocking flash. He was merely stating the facts about the past weeks.

“I…” he stammered, wishing he knew what to say. He wanted to say something; he needed to. He _did_ still like Shintaro, and he wished they could spend more time together. If only he had more time.

“I know you want to do your best at school,” Shintaro said quickly, “and I really admire that. It’s just that… Well, I guess I’m a bit lonely. Even Jesse said the same, and he can at least see you on daily basis.”

Juri looked at his palms resting in his lap and felt awful. Sure, school work was very high on his priority list, but weren’t friends even higher? Wasn’t Shintaro?

“I’m sorry,” Juri murmured and fought to keep his voice steady, “I really am.”

At least he knew how to apologize, Juri thought bitterly, even if he was a verbally handicapped jerk when it came to any other aspect of this whole dating thing.

“It’s okay,” Shintaro said and walked across the room, stopping in front the desk that Juri was sitting on. “I just miss you an awful lot, that’s all.”

“I miss you too,” Juri said in a tight voice, suddenly realizing how true it really was. He was freaking tired; both sleep-deprived and overall exhausted, but what made him feel the worst was the lack of warmth that his friends usually brought into his life whenever they simply hung around together without doing anything very special. He hadn’t noticed how much he had missed Shintaro, until now.

In a sudden whim he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Shintaro’s neck, pressing his cheek against the boy’s hair and breathing in Shintaro’s familiar scent like his life was depending on that. He almost felt like it was.

“Shh,” Shintaro murmured and wrapped his own arms around Juri’s waist, pulling him closer until Juri was sitting on the very edge of the desk. “It’s okay, Juri.”

“I’m sorry,” Juri whispered again and took a shaking breath, the sudden outburst of stress and tiredness making him shiver. Shintaro rubbed Juri’s back in soothing circles with his knuckles until Juri felt a bit better and relaxed into Shintaro’s embrace.

“Say,” Shintaro murmured, leaning his chin against Juri’s shoulder, “do you think you’d have some time to spend with me this weekend?”

“I’ll hang around with you the whole weekend if you want me to,” Juri promised, “I’ll have to do some of my homework though, but it would be nice if you were there with me anyway. I… I’d like it.”

“Thank you,” Shintaro sighed, and the tone of his voice was full of relief and happiness. Juri could have listened to such a voice forever. Too bad it was late in the evening and they would be in trouble if someone found them wandering around.

“I guess we should go,” Shintaro murmured after a while and Juri nodded but didn’t let the other step back when he tried to. “Juri?”

“Shut up,” Juri murmured, pulled Shintaro so close that they were completely chest-to-chest, and pressed his lips on Shintaro’s. Shintaro let out a surprised whine but answered to the kiss without hesitation, gripping the back of Juri’s shirt tightly in his fist and tilting his head towards the touch when Juri lifted his hand up into Shintaro’s hair.

Juri couldn’t help a small moan when he felt Shintaro’s tongue against his lower lip, and he tentatively moved his own tongue to meet Shintaro’s. It felt weird and slimy, but also exciting and hot. Yet he winced and pulled away when Shintaro brushed his palate with the tip of his tongue.

“It tickles,” he murmured and felt his cheeks heating in embarrassment.

“Sorry,” Shintaro said and the deep sound of his laughter made Juri shiver a bit, “How about this?” Shintaro leaned closer again, and instead of Juri’s mouth his lips pressed on the bare patch of skin right under Juri’s ear, and Juri gasped for breath, his eyes falling shut again.

“Feels good, huh?” Shintaro asked as if he really knew what he was doing, even though the tone of his voice gave away his nervousness.

“Yes,” Juri breathed and inhaled sharply when Shintaro continued what he had started; pressing light kisses on his neck and jawline and tangling his fingers into Juri’s hair at the same time. The air in the classroom suddenly felt much warmer and Juri’s heart was racing when he arched closer and tilted his head to give Shintaro even better access on his skin. He wanted to touch Shintaro; make Shintaro feel as good as he felt right at the moment, but somehow the way Shintaro nibbled his skin with his lips and sometimes with his teeth too made him unable to perform any task more demanding than hanging on Shintaro’s shirt.

In the end Shintaro grabbed Juri’s wrists and moved his hands to his own waist, gasping when Juri took the clue and carefully slipped his fingers under the hem of Shintaro’s shirt, finally feeling the warm smooth skin that he had wanted to touch for a longer time than he could even remember. 

“Juri,” Shintaro moaned, shuddering violently when Juri dragged his fingertips across the small of his back and leaned down to pull him into a messy kiss.

It was stupid, Juri knew. Stupid and kind of dangerous. It didn't really matter that the door was locked; almost every witch and wizard in the school knew the spell to open locked doors. At least those who were older than twelve. If someone found them in the classroom right at the moment, it would not only be incredibly embarrassing but they would probably get detention too, for sneaking around outside their common rooms after nine o’clock. Juri didn’t want that to happen.

Yet he couldn’t stop himself. He had never known how dizzy Shintaro could make him feel - how much he could want the boy - and the mere thought of it made his already tight pants feel even more uncomfortable. Juri wanted to _feel_ things and yet he wasn’t sure if he’d dare touch Shintaro in the way he so much wanted to, or if Shintaro wanted to touch him in that way at all. Unfortunately finding out about Shintaro's preferences in any mature, clear way would have demanded talking about it and Juri wasn’t sure he could do that. It was one thing to imagine things, another to do them, and a completely different thing to talk about such things.

“What’s wrong?” Shintaro asked and looked up into Juri’s eyes. Juri blinked in confusion and shook his head.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You look weird,” Shintaro chuckled, “What are you thinking about?”

Juri shook his head again, unable to express his thoughts aloud. How could he have explained it anyway? He was feeling so much, so many things that he couldn’t even name, and at the same time he was afraid he was wanting more than Shintaro was willing to give him.

“You,” he finally said and Shintaro’s face spread into a delighted grin. He opened his mouth to say something when they heard a noise from the door and froze on their places. Someone was behind the door, going to open it!

Shintaro's reflexes were faster than Juri’s as he grabbed on Juri’s wrist and pulled him down from the desk.

“Come, quick,” he hissed and they stormed to the back of the classroom. It was sheer luck that they had chosen a room with two entrances, and they managed to slip through the back door on the same second as the caretaker of the school stepped in, his puzzled murmur echoing in the empty room.

“There was some noise… I'm sure!”

Juri and Shintaro rushed through the corridor, down by the stairs and to the end of another corridor, only stopping to catch their breaths when they stood in front of the entrance of the Hufflepuff common room.

“That was close,” Shintaro said and grimaced, “Let’s never do that in any classroom again.”

Still gasping for breath, Juri nodded and glanced around. As far as he could see and hear they were the only people around but in their school one could never be sure.

“Go to sleep,” he said once he could talk again.

“I will,” Shintaro said and nodded, “So, uh. We’ll meet during the weekend.”

“Once tomorrow’s lessons are over you can be sure I won’t take my eyes from you even for a minute,” Juri chuckled and leaned closer so that he could whisper his next words straight into Shintaro’s ear. “How about meeting in the hideout? No-one will walk in on us, and there really are some things I want to do to you without getting disturbed.”

Shintaro’s sudden shiver and shaky breath were exactly the reaction that Juri had wanted to get, and he grinned against the last goodnight kiss. At least he wasn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable in his pants.

“Good night,” he whispered against Shintaro’s lips and stepped back, smiling at the boy who desperately tried to gather the pieces of his sanity.

“Good night,” Shintaro breathed and shook his head. “I hate you.”

“I know,” Juri said and smirked before he waved his hand and walked away. At the end of the corridor he glanced behind to see Shintaro going through the door of his Common Room, and he took a deep breath, shaking his head. Why was it so damn difficult to talk about his feelings, but so tempting and easy to dirty-talk Shintaro out of his mind?

“Thanks,” he whispered to the Fat Lady a moment later when he was standing in front of the painting that moved aside to let him into the Common Room.

“No problem,” she answered drowsily, “Although I must say I hope there were more students who'd understand to appreciate me keeping all the secrets I learn during the nights…”

“I do appreciate your help,” Juri promised with a small smile as he stepped in, “Good night.”

-

Once the last lesson of Friday ended Juri suddenly learned, once again, that it was one thing to whisper allusive promises in Shintaro’s ear, and another to actually carry out those promises. Maybe they should have agreed about the exact time of their meeting, too. They hadn’t, and Juri was both confused and impatient even though he didn’t quite want to admit it. He should probably have asked Shintaro about it but he didn’t want to sound too eager, as if he had nothing else in his mind but making out. (Which was very close to the truth actually, but no-one needed to know that.)

“Seriously, try to stay in your pants,” Jesse hissed to Juri at the dinner table, “And for heaven’s sake stop fidgeting every time someone talks to you!”

“I can’t help it,” Juri snapped back, “You try agreeing about a sex date with your boyfriend and then see if standing still is easy.”

“A sex date,” Jesse repeated, lifting his other brow, “Are you really going to do it?”

“I- How’s that your business?” Juri asked and narrowed his eyes.

“As your best friend it’s my fundamental right to know,” Jesse announced, “Especially when it’s my responsibility to make sure your romantic evening won't be disturbed.”

“The only thing you need to do is tell the others that they’d better stay far from the hideout as long as we are there,” Juri reminded. Jesse chuckled and pointed at him with his fork.

“Why don’t _you_ tell them so, anyway? They’re not stupid you know. Each one of them will immediately guess what’s going on in there.”

“Because it’s embarrassing!” Juri moaned quietly, “What do you think I could say? ‘Hey guys, I’m planning to do some adult things with my boyfriend tonight so please let us be alone?’ Nope.”

“And me having to say the same thing to them isn’t embarrassing for the both of us because..?”

“Because that way I won’t have to do it, that’s all,” Juri said and made a face. He almost glanced up towards the Hufflepuff table but managed to stop himself just in time. He wanted to at least be able to eat in peace, and he was afraid that even the smallest glance of Shintaro might make him think about things that he shouldn’t think in a public place.

Despite all the mental preparing, Juri almost chickened when Shintaro appeared next to the Gryffindor table after the dinner and sat down next to him like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Was it, though? For the first time on the whole day Juri considered the possibility of himself overreacting. He secretly glanced at Shintaro who was chatting animatedly with Kento and Shoki who had been allowed to sit closer to Juri and Jesse again, now that they weren’t ‘gossiping' anymore, as Kento had expressed it.

“Hey, Morimoto! We’re going to the Quidditch Pitch to play, want to join in?” another Hufflepuff boy yelled from across the Hall when he noticed Shintaro.

“Sorry, I already have plans for the evening,” Shintaro hollered back and Juri winced before he managed to stop himself. Of course Shintaro was not going to announce any details just like that but Juri sighed anyway when the boy shrugged and left the hall with his friends.

“Oh, it’s late!” Shoki suddenly noticed and got up from the table, with a sly grin and a wink, “I need to go! I have a date, you know.”

“The girl must be blind, for having laid his eyes on you,” Kento teased and everyone laughed when Shoki turned his nose up and calmly stated he was at least going to have civilized companion, unlike the people he hung around right at the moment.

“I guess I had better go too,” Shintaro suddenly said and turned to look at Juri, “I’ll just get my books from the Common Room, and maybe some more parchments, too. The Herbology teacher actually wants us to write five pages about some weird plants. Will you wait for me by the third floor flat?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. I need to get some… some books too,” Juri stammered, willing himself to smile although even breathing normally was behind an effort. Shintaro’s intensive stare probably just meant he wanted Juri to understand the unsaid things between his lines but it didn’t lessen at all the effect that the boy’s dark eyes had on Juri.

Only after getting into the privacy of the dormitory Juri dared to flop down onto his bed and take a deep breath.

“It’s okay,” he murmured to himself, “Don’t push yourself. It’s just Shintaro, right? No need to act cool or experienced.” It was easier said than done but made him feel a bit better anyway. After all, it was the truth.

After a while he sat up and picked some random study books from his night stand into his bag. Then he peeked out of the door and listened quietly until he was sure no-one was walking in the stairs, and went to fish a small packet from under his bed. He unwrapped the packet and pushed the brown wrapping paper back under the bed - he’d clean it up later - and took a closer look at the things that had been in the packet: a small tube of lubricant gel and a thin cardboard box that contained five single-packed condoms.

The lubricant made sense but Juri shook his head when looking at the packet of condoms. Sure, he knew condoms were the main reason for every muggle family in the world not having a dozen of children, but he still doubted if such a small piece of plastic-or-something could really work. Besides, it wasn’t like either he or Shintaro would get knocked up anyway. That’s what he had said to Jesse, too, when they had talked about it on the night before.

_“Here, I thought you might need them,” Jesse said with a wide smile. He was clearly very satisfied with himself and Juri tried his best not to roll his eyes when he realized what Jesse was offering to him._

_“Where did you get these?” he asked and quickly bundled the brown wrapping paper up again._

_“I bought them in a drugstore on the Christmas holiday. Thought you might need them, eventually. Though I must admit I thought it would be earlier.”_

_“We don’t need these,” Juri insisted, “At least there’s something good in both of us being boys!”_

_“Geez, fatherhood isn’t the only thing that condoms protect you from,” Jesse sighed, “Whoever gave you the sexual education, what did they even tell you?”_

_“Hyoga passed me on Koki’s old porn magazines?” Juri tried and Jesse sighed deeply enough that Juri could almost smell the stink of disapproval._

_“Ours are better than yours,” Juri pointed out, just for the sake of protesting, “Or did muggles already develop magazines with moving pictures?”_

_“We don’t need moving pictures when we have hours and hours of video material,” Jesse said calmly. “Come on, at least you won’t have that big a mess to clean up afterwards. And it won’t hurt you to learn how to use them anyway.”_

_“I know how to use them,” Juri lied. Fortunately Kento wandered into the bedroom right on that moment, giving Juri got an excuse to throw the packet under his bed and change the topic of conversation._

With a sigh Juri pushed both the lubricant and the condoms into his bag. He guessed it wouldn't hurt to try them; even though he wasn’t going to let Jesse know it. His point about the cleanness had been a really good one.

“Hi,” Shintaro said and smiled when Juri found him at the flat of the third floor, “I thought you were supposed the one to wait for me?”

“Sorry,” Juri said even though Shintaro’s expression was mostly amused instead of displeased. “I had to find a new quill; the old one had gotten crumpled in my bag,” he murmured when some girls walked past them.

“Let’s go,” Shintaro said and they sneaked their way into the right floor and corridor. Juri wasn’t sure if he felt better or worse when they were finally safely in the hideout, out of other people’s reach and eyes. On one hand he felt relieved when he didn’t need to hide his nervousness anymore, while on the other hand being alone with Shintaro was apt to make him even more nervous.

The brightness of the lights in the room bothered Juri just enough that the turned to put off all but one torch on the wall. He glanced at Shintaro who casually dropped his school bag on the floor and threw himself onto his favorite armchair. If Shintaro was feeling even close to what Juri was dealing with, he hid it very well and Juri made a face. _Stop it,_ he told himself as he left his bag on the chair next to the table and sat down onto the couch.

“Hey,” Shintaro said with a soft smile and leaned his head against the back rest of the armchair, “Are you all right?”

“Huh? Yeah, why?” Juri asked and wished more than anything that he could stop shivering whenever he looked at Shintaro.

“Because you look like a prisoner with a death sentence,” Shintaro chuckled and got up from his chair, flopping next to Juri instead. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked up at Juri. “Are you scared?”

“Of what?” Juri chuckled and hated himself for being so obvious.

“I am,” Shintaro admitted, ignoring the fact that Juri hadn’t even answered to his question. “It’s kind of stupid really. I mean, it’s just you. And there’s nothing to be afraid of, right?”

“I guess,” Juri said, suddenly feeling a lot better. He didn’t know how Shintaro managed to say such a thing aloud so easily but then again, it wasn’t the first time he did so, and Juri had already used to it long ago.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot. For the whole day to be honest,” Shintaro said quietly and smiled a bit, glancing up into Juri’s eyes again, “You have no idea.”

“I think I have,” Juri murmured and finally dared to inch towards Shintaro and lean his head against the boy’s shoulder. Shintaro uttered a small laugh and offered his hand to Juri, and Juri didn’t hesitate taking the hand into his own.

“Feels weird,” he finally said and felt Shintaro nod.

“But it’s a nice feeling too,” Shintaro said and Juri agreed with him. “Do you really want to do… something? Because I do.”

“I want to,” Juri said firmly. “Even though I don’t know how to start,” he added after a while, in a more quiet voice. Shintaro nodded again. He brushed his thumb on the back of Juri’s hand slowly, as if he didn’t even notice what he was doing, and Juri smiled. It felt nice, and somehow made some of his nervousness melt away.

“I think I know where to start,” Shintaro chuckled, turned to look at Juri, and leaned over to close the distance between them. 

It wasn’t a bad start, Juri decided when he closed his eyes and moved his lips against Shintaro’s as he had done many times before. Kissing didn’t require embarrassing words or complicated thoughts and at least Juri knew how to do it. He let go of Shintaro’s hand and lifted it up on his neck instead, and Shintaro’s approving moan encouraged him to continue.

Shintaro’s lips were warm and soft, and Juri smiled against the kiss when he felt the familiar dizziness that always seized him whenever Shintaro was close enough. Thinking about the previous evening he moved his free hand behind Shintaro’s back and moved it around, feeling Shintaro’s shoulders and sides, the small of his back, his neck and his hair; any place he could reach when sitting side by side like that.

“Juri,” Shintaro gasped when Juri brushed his fingertips across his neck between his hairline and the collar of his white school shirt. “Do that again. Please?”

“This?” Juri said and repeated the move, only barely touching the skin under his fingers, and watched in awe how Shintaro closed his eyes and took a deep shaky breath. 

“Does it really feel that good?” Juri asked in amazement and continued the caressing motion.

“Yeah,” Shintaro murmured and grabbed the fabric if Juri’s shirt, “I think… it’s because of all the waiting, you know? Somehow, everything feels a hundred times more intense.”

Juri nodded and continued until Shintaro seemed to relax under his touch and peacefully leaned against him. The posture felt a bit awkward and Juri looked at the sofa judgingly until he got an idea.

“Hey, stand up for a moment,” he whispered and pulled Shintaro up together with him.

“Why?” Shintaro asked but a smile spread on his face as soon as Juri found his wand from his bag and, with a simple spell, changed the sofa into a very comfortable-looking bed. It wasn’t quite as wide as Juri would have wished and the floral pattern was even uglier on the sheets than it had been on the upholstery but all in all the result of his spell was better than the sofa had been.

“Not bad,” Shintaro said and Juri rolled his eyes.

“Of course it’s not bad. I don’t think any student in this school is even nearly as good in Transfigurations as we are,” he reminded Shintaro and inched closer, taking a hold on Shintaro’s collar with his both hands, _just because he could_.

“I’ve wanted to do this the whole day,” he sighed.

“To wrinkle my shirt?” Shintaro asked and flashed a teasing smile that faded when Juri tightened his grip and yanked him even closer.

“To find out if you like the thought of you being manhandled a bit as much as I like it,” Juri hissed and gave himself a mental pat on the back when Shintaro closed his eyes and gasped for breath. It almost made Juri want to find out how far he would push Shintaro with his words only. Maybe he would try it sometime, he decided, but not tonight. There was no way he could keep his hands off of Shintaro now that he was finally allowed to touch him everywhere.

Well, at least supposedly allowed. He had only taken along the lube and condoms to be on the safe side; he didn’t know if he’d need them. To be honest Juri didn’t even know how far Shintaro was ready to go. He wanted to ask but it felt too awkward and he decided to go for actions instead of words. Nothing bad could happen if he just went on slowly enough, right? That way Shintaro would have time to stop him, should he try to do something wrong.

For a moment Juri hesitated, almost returning to the question of how to start until he realized it was a stupid thought. They had already started, he psyched himself; continuing was easier, even after a short pause.

Apparently Shintaro had just been waiting for Juri to do the initial move, as he immediately caught up when Juri pulled him closer and kissed him again, running his hands along Shintaro’s arms and back. The soft fabric of Shintaro’s black slipover felt nice under his fingers but he couldn’t help thinking about how much better the bare skin under the clothes would feel.

“Just take it off,” Shintaro murmured when Juri’s fingers stopped to play with the hem of the slipover, and Juri nodded. His heart sped up all at once when he pulled the cloth away and dropped it on the arm rest of the closest armchair. “That, too,” Shintaro said and glanced down at the white shirt.

Juri’s hands were shaking a bit when he reached up to open Shintaro’s tie and the buttons, but either Shintaro didn’t notice or he just didn’t bother saying anything. Maybe it was a good thing, Juri thought when he opened the last button and swallowed at the sight. It wasn’t the first time he saw Shintaro (almost) shirtless, but it definitely was the first time he could do it like this, openly admiring every muscle and curve.

“Do you like what you see?” Shintaro asked and grinned but it was clear to Juri that more than half of the question was meant to be serious.

“I do,” he sighed with a smile and curiously ran his fingers across the bare chest, enjoying the warmth and smoothness of the skin, Shintaro’s breathy chuckle encouraging him to continue. Shintaro didn’t wait for an invitation but reached straightforwardly to Juri’s shirt and pushed it down his shoulders as soon as it was buttoned open. Juri shivered, unsure if that was because of his own excitement, the sudden coolness, or the way Shintaro looked at him.

“Much better,” Shintaro chuckled when Juri shook his arms out of the sleeves of his shirt, and Juri could only smile to cover his bafflement. It felt weird to just stand there, being stared at like that, and he did the first thing that came up to his mind: backed to the bed and sat down in the middle of it, hoping Shintaro would get his clue and join him.

Shintaro did, and Juri sighed contently when the boy climbed onto the bed and crawled closer to Juri on his hands and knees, kissing him again and slowly pressing him lower until Juri was lying on the bed under him. Juri gasped and startled when Shintaro leaned down and he felt the sudden warmth of Shintaro’s body against his, and Shintaro's whole weight pressing him against the mattress.

“Can you still breathe,” Shintaro asked when he heard the gasp and Juri quickly wrapped his arms around Shintaro’s back, afraid that the boy would move if he thought he was making Juri feel uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Juri said and let out a small laugh when Shintaro looked at him pointedly, “Well, not really. But I want you to stay where you are!”

“Sure,” Shintaro said and turned to press a light kiss on Juri’s neck. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?” Juri asked curiously but obeyed anyway, shifting a bit to get into better position.

“Just… because. It feels different when you can only feel and not see anything,” Shintaro murmured and gave a tentative lick on Juri’s collarbone. “Does it feel good?”

“I don’t know,” Juri said slowly when Shintaro continued, “I mean, it does but it’s also difficult to feel at all. I always feel it when you kiss me like that but- _ouch_.” Apparently Shintaro had also noticed how little effect his small licks had on Juri and he had pinched a small patch of skin between his teeth instead.

“At least you felt that one,” Shintaro chuckled and Juri rolled his eyes.

“Too much talking,” he complained and pulled Shintaro down into a heated kiss.

It was new and exciting and hot, the way Shintaro’s touches left a tingling sensation on his skin and how his kisses eventually turned deeper, more demanding, and more hasty. Juri was very aware of his aching erection, and couldn’t help a moan when Shintaro rolled his hips, rubbing his own equally hard crotch against Juri’s through their pants. At the same time he continued nibbling on Juri’s neck and chest and shoulders, as if he had decided to cover every single square inch with kisses and small almost-but-not-quite-bites.

“Juri,” Shintaro gasped and Juri squirmed at the feeling of Shintaro’s hasty breath on his skin where Shintaro had just planted a wet kiss, “I- I want to touch you. Let me?”

“Uh, sure,” Juri said, even though the question only made him shiver of cold nervousness. Did he need to take his pants off? Would Shintaro take them? Or was it enough to just open the pants as much as needed? He suddenly felt awfully lost; he didn’t know what to do or what to say. Hell, he didn’t even know if he was supposed to do or say something in the first place. It was not a nice feeling at all, and Juri winced at Shintaro’s next tentative touch on his thigh.

“What’s wrong?” Shintaro asked and immediately pulled his hand away, “Did I do something wrong?”

“You didn’t even _do_ anything yet,” Juri snapped from between his teeth, feeling so ashamed and angry at his own cowardice that he couldn’t even try looking at Shintaro into the eyes.

“Oh,” Shintaro said and hesitated for a second, “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” Juri said quickly and bit his lip. “No. Go on. I just. I don’t know. What do you want me to do? I haven’t done this before and I know you haven’t either but it doesn’t really make this any easier, not that it’d be easier if you _had_ done anything like this but I guess I’m a bit scared and it’s freaking embarrassing” he blurted out in one breath and expected Shintaro to laugh at him. But Shintaro didn’t laugh. Instead, he looked down and Juri was almost sure that the embarrassed expression on his face was an exact copy of the one that had been Juri’s expression just a moment ago.

“Sorry,” Shintaro said and moved aside. Juri’s mouth dropped open in confusion and he sat up too.

“What are you apologizing for?” he asked, having completely missed Shintaro’s point.

“I don’t know,” Shintaro admitted, “But something that I did made you feel like that.”

“No, it just,” Juri stammered, trying to find the right words and failing miserably. He ruffled his own hair in frustration and made a face. “Nobody ever told me making out would be so complicated.”

“Yeah,” Shintaro said gloomily. His face was bright red; not in the cute way that girls in Jesse’s muggle comics blushed but actually burning of embarrassment, and while seeing he wasn’t alone with his awkwardness made Juri feel a bit better, he also felt bad for Shintaro and wished he could make him feel better somehow. Unfortunately the only way to relieve their excitement would have required talking and Juri really, really didn’t want to do that.

Yet he had to.

“I think,” he started, forcing himself to look at Shintaro, “I think we should… talk.”

“Probably, yeah,” Shintaro admitted and glanced down at Juri’s school pants, “Maybe we should start right away, the little one looks like he doesn’t want to end up waiting too long.”

“I’ll show you a little one,” Juri huffed, and the both of them burst out in laughter. Laughing had an incredible power that immediately relieved Juri’s strained nerves. They were being ridiculous and he knew it. It was just Shintaro, he reminded himself once again.

“Come here,” Juri then said, pulled Shintaro next to him, and maneuvered the both of them under the blankets. It was a familiar thing to do for the both of them and Juri happily curled up to Shintaro’s side. He had to force the first questions out of his mouth and Shintaro had a hard time at answering, but after a while it got slightly easier. Little by little they managed to word out their insecurities and worries, and when Shintaro at some point started to gently caress Juri’s thigh again, Juri didn’t need feel like he wanted to run away anymore. Instead, he pressed closer and decided it was time to use his mouth for something more concrete than mere talking.

The long talk had managed to make them both feel less awkward but being comfortable didn't equal with being experienced. Juri still felt clumsy and embarrassed all the time but Shintaro didn't seem to care the slightest bit, and the long, deep moan and the absolutely uninhibited expression of pleasure on Shintaro's face as he came all over Juri's hands made it all worth it.

In the end they didn't need Jesse’s present. However, Shintaro, too, swore he really appreciated the gesture anyway.

“Maybe we’ll find some use for them next time ,” Juri chuckled, taking a more comfortable position while making sure he didn’t move too far. He ended up lying half on Shintaro and half on the bed; his head was resting on Shintaro’s shoulder, his other arm around the boy’s chest, and their legs tangled together. 

Shintaro let out a low laugh and poked Juri’s cheek with his index finger, then wrapping his arms around Juri’s shoulders again.

“As if you’d be ready for that yet,” he chuckled. Juri made a face and retaliated by reaching up to bite Shintaro’s earlobe. Shintaro winced and fake-slapped Juri’s temple.

“Give a man a moment to gather himself!” he complained and pressed his nose into Juri’s hair. “Do you think Kento and Shoki will get worried if you don’t come back to the Gryffindor tower tonight?”

“They’ll probably just think I’ve been studying somewhere for the whole night,” Juri murmured and made a face. “Once the N.E.W.T.s are over, I swear I’ll never study anything anymore. It sucks to be such a diligent student.”

“Once the N.E.W.T.s are over, you're not going to stay here too long time anymore,” Shintaro said in a quiet voice and Juri opened his eyes. He stared at the small flame of the torch that was still bringing them some light, and sighed.

“I know,” he said. “But, you know. I’ll write to you. And I’ll be at Diagon Alley. Not further away than that.”

“It’s like a million miles from here to London,” Shintaro whined sullenly and Juri nodded.

“I know. I’ll miss you.”

“We sound like a lovestruck couple on their honeymoon,” Shintaro said after a quiet moment and laughed, but there was a gloomy strain in his voice, and Juri silenced him with a firm kiss.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said emphatically and placed his palm on Shintaro’s face, covering his eyes. “Now sleep. Little kids’ bedtime was hours ago.”

“This little kid just jerked you off,” Shintaro pointed out and turned his head until Juri's hand was resting on his cheek instead. Juri scrunched his nose at the expression and closed his eyes, too.

“Sometimes I really wonder why I don’t hate you more than I do,” he murmured. He didn’t see Shintaro’s face anymore but he heard the smile in the boy’s voice.

“I like you too.”


	8. Chapter 8

“You’ve gotten laid,” was the first thing Shoki said in the morning when Juri sat down into the Gryffindor table for breakfast.

“Huh?” Juri blinked and continued before he actually managed to think about what he was saying, “How did you know?”

“So it’s true?” Kento yelped, almost choking on his pumpkin juice.

“Uh, well. Kind of,” Juri admitted, not looking at his roommates but instead concentrating on choosing the best-looking sandwich on the plate in front of him.

“Don’t you dare think you could have kept such a thing as a secret. It's glowing all over your face,” Shoki said with a sly smile and leaned across the table. At least he had the courtesy to lower his voice when he winked at Juri and asked who the lucky lady was.

“None of your business,” Juri said calmly once he got on track again. He might be a nervous wreck when it came to talking about feelings and other serious things but bantering and joking like this were his specialty; there was no way Shoki was going to outsmart him on his home court.

“Ugh, I wish I had someone too,” Shoki sighed and rested his chin against his palm, “It’s not a long time before the Valentine’s day and I don’t have a date! That’s unacceptable!”

"Huh, what happened to the one you had last night?" Juri asked and took a bite of his sandwich.

"It turned out that the only reason she asked to meet me was to scold me for having tried to hit on her best friend who already has a boyfriend. She wouldn't believe me when I swore it was just a big misunderstanding!"

“Maybe if you hadn’t already tried to woo every single girl in the school older than fourteen, you would have some chance,” Kento chuckled and grinned widely, “Or maybe if you hadn’t turned down the one who would actually wanted to get you once.”

“Oh,” Shoki said as he remembered the girl Kento was talking about, “She can’t be that heartbroken or angry anymore! Maybe I should try her!”

“She’s not heartbroken anymore,” Kento confirmed, “But you’ll only try hitting on her in your dreams anymore. She’s _my_ date now.”

“Who is whose date?”

Juri looked up and saw Hokuto who threw his other leg across the long bench and sat sideways next to Juri, apparently having already finished his own breakfast.

“No-one,” Shoki said gloomily and sighed. His misery didn’t seem to be very deep, though, as only after a moment he reached his head up again, looking around in the Hall and probably trying to spot even one girl that he hadn’t already tried to hit on, excluding everyone who was too young or just didn’t match on his tastes in some way.

“Do you have a date for the Valentine’s day?” Kento asked and Hokuto shook his head. The topic of the conversation changed soon, but for a long time after that Juri was sure he had seen a flash of suppressed emotion behind Hokuto’s carefully composed face.

“How did your essay on hippocampus food turn out?” Kento asked, “I’m afraid mine isn’t long enough but it’ll have to do.”

“Fuck,” Juri murmured; he had completely forgotten about the essay he had left waiting for him two nights ago. “When was the deadline again?” he checked.

“Monday morning,” Kento said, stretched, and waved at someone behind Juri’s back.

“I might have time to finish it tonight,” Juri calculated, “Hokuto, may I borrow your essay and copy some parts on mine? Please?”

“Of course you--” Hokuto started and looked up, suddenly wincing like something horrible had come up to his mind. “Uh, I need to go! Almost forgot something. Bye!”

“What could be so urgent?” Shoki asked, raising his eyebrows when Hokuto jumped up from the table and rushed out of the Great Hall. “It’s Saturday! What’s wrong with him?” The question was pointed to Fuma who went around the table and slumped next to Kento, leaning his head against Kento’s shoulder and looking very tired or very frustrated, or maybe both - Juri couldn't decide.

“I have no idea,” Fuma huffed with a pout, “He won’t tell me, no matter how many times I ask!”

Juri nodded empathetically, acting like Hokuto’s behavior seemed as weird to him as it seemed to the others, while in fact he had a clear supposition about what made their friend act in such an abnormal way. Hokuto liked someone, and Juri knew better than well how it was; purposefully learning another person’s timetables by heart and then staring at the clock in order to be in the right place in the right time, hoping to ‘accidentally’ meet that person in the corridor. Well, of course not everyone was pathetic like that but Juri himself was, and as far as he knew his friends, Hokuto was very similar to him when it came to things like this.

He almost forgot about the whole matter for a while but in the evening of Valentine’s Day he suddenly got a weird idea that started to make more sense the more he thought about it. The realization hit on him after the dinner (a special Valentine-themed menu with practically everything being cooked or baked to be heart-shaped) when he and Shintaro were just about to inconspicuously disappear from the Great Hall, and Fuma jogged after them.

“Do you have a moment?” Fuma asked.

“What is it?” Juri asked curiously in a bit lower voice than usually, Fuma’s expression telling him the topic was something that the whole school didn’t need to hear.

“Have either of you seen Hokuto?” Fuma asked and frowned when Juri shook his head. “Shit. I was sure you'd know where he is.”

“Why would I we know? You’re the one who sleeps in the same dormitory and eats at the same table,” Juri pointed out, “I don’t even see him during the lessons, except in Care of Magical Creatures.”

“Because you’re his _friends_ , moron,” Fuma said and rolled his eyes, “and he has spent his every free second with you guys lately, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Juri thought about it, and suddenly realized Fuma was right. During the last few weeks Hokuto had stuck with him and the rest of their gang even tighter than he usually did. Sometimes he had even switched into other tables to eat with Juri and Jesse, Taiga, or Shintaro and Kouchi. He hung around with them in the evenings, too, only going back to the Ravenclaw Common Room when it was too late to be anywhere else. He had even started to do his homework in the hideout room, rather than in the library or the Common Room.

“I just want to talk to him,” Fuma said and waved his hands helplessly, “But it’s like he’s avoiding me on purpose.”

That was when the small thought came up to Juri’s mind. He didn’t dare to say anything about it, in case he was wrong after all, but he was almost sure he wasn’t. At the same time Fuma let out a resigned sigh and shook his head.

“I guess it’s no use,” he said and looked so disappointed that Juri decided to throw all the solidarity into the trash can. Fuma was his friend as well and this time Juri was definitely on his side - provided that he was right with his conclusion.

“Hey, I’ll help you,” he said and the puzzled yet hopeful look that spread on Fuma’s face told Juri he had made the right decision. “Go upstairs and wait somewhere around the Fat Lady’s painting. You know where it is, right?”

“Of course I do,” Fuma chuckled, “But what good will that do?”

“Hokuto will be there in about twenty minutes,” Juri said with an encouraging grin.

“What are you going to do?” Shintaro asked after a while, jotting alongside when Juri strode by the corridors.

“I’m doing them a favor,” Juri said with a smile.

“How?” Shintaro asked, still not quite getting it.

“By sending an owl.”

Hours later, when it was well past midnight and Juri was already sleeping in his own bed, he woke up when someone tugged on his ear.

“Huh? What do you want?” he murmured drowsily, squinting to see in the dark room.

“I’m very sorry to wake you up, sir,” a tiny and extremely shy-looking house elf whispered apologetically and quickly placed a folded piece of parchment on Juri’s pillow, “But I was asked to deliver this to you.”

“Couldn’t it wait until the morning?” Juri groaned, curiosity not quite overriding the grumpiness of getting woken up in such an untimely hour.

“No, sir, the order was to bring it immediately,” the elf said, bowed deeply and vanished before Juri managed to ask any more questions.

“What the hell…” he murmured and reached for his wand, the folded piece of parchment with his other hand at the same time. “Lumos.”

 _You twisted Flobberworm Fart are a sneaky traitor and a horrible person in every possible way. I’ll never forgive you,_ the message said in Hokuto’s familiar handwriting. For a second Juri thought he had made a horrible mistake, until he noticed some very tiny scribbling on the corner of the parchment: _Thank you. ♥_

“I knew it,” Juri hissed in the darkness, unable to help a wide grin that pulled up the corners of his mouth. He would probably be in trouble in the morning but that would be a small price for being able to say he had made his friends happy in the best possible way.

 

\- - -

 

“So what’s going on?” Taiga asked on one windy yet warm afternoon in the spring, when he stepped into the hideout where everyone else had already been waiting for him. “Why such a hurry?”

“Come on,” Jesse said impatiently, “We’ve waited for ages already and Shintaro wouldn’t tell us before everyone's here!”

“Say, Taiga,” Shintaro said eagerly and could hardly wait until Taiga sat down on the last empty chair next to the table, “have you ever seen a real centaur?”

“Huh? I haven’t. Why?”

“Anyone else?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Want to see some?” Shintaro asked with a sly smile and spread a roll of parchment onto the table. It was a map; hand-drawn and only very rough one, but recognizable anyway, and everyone leaned closer to get a better view.

“Where did you get that?” Hokuto asked and Shintaro beamed of self-satisfaction.

“It was Ryutaro’s homework last year,” he explained, “They had to form groups and make presentations about different things in the history of Hogwarts. Ryutaro’s group made their presentation about the Forbidden Forest. They got a very good grade so this must at least be a decent map!”

“What does it have to do with centaurs?” Taiga continued, even though he looked like he was starting to get the point of the conversation.

“There are some in the forest!” Shintaro announced, “And we’re going to go to see them!”

“It’s forbidden, though,” Kouchi pointed out the obvious fact even thought Shintaro didn’t seem to listen to him, “You know, thus the name.”

“You guys don’t have much time left here anymore,” the youngest boy reasoned, “You should at least do something cool before leaving the school!”

“I’m not sure it’s very cool if we get expelled for breaking the rules,” Taiga chuckled but Juri saw the look in his eyes and knew he was hanging on his role as the responsible one just for the habit.

“Do you know where the centaurs live, then?” Hokuto asked and smiled widely, as if he would have been ready to go right away.

“I overheard the Astronomy teacher talking with the Care of Magical Creatures teacher,” Shintaro said and pointed at a spot where the maker of the map had drawn a few stylized hills, “Centaurs like to live in higher places where they can see the sky. The teachers talked about the northern border of the forest, something about how the centaurs have been away for years and just came back from the mountains.”

“Cool,” Jesse breathed, and Juri understood his enthusiasm. Apparently so did Kouchi, Taiga, and Hokuto.

“So what are we waiting for? Let’s go already,” Hokuto said jokingly and coughed when Shintaro nodded eagerly. “No, what? Really?”

“Why not?” Taiga said thoughtfully, “It has to be at night anyway so that no-one will wonder where we are. And it’s the most practical time now that it’s weekend; we can be out in the forest the whole night and sleep tomorrow.”

“Do we need something special with us?” Kouchi wondered, and on the next moment they were already making wild plans for the night.

“How will we get there?” Juri asked, “The forest is huge; it might take hours to make it to the hills.”

“Are you a man or are you a dog?” Hokuto asked amusedly, and Juri chuckled, at the same time throwing a worried glance at Jesse who was apparently thinking about the same thing.

“I’ll carry you,” Shintaro said to Jesse, “I should be able to do it. Besides, we’re not in a hurry. If I get tired in the middle, we’ll just walk for a while.”

It took almost an hour before they had a finished plan, and by then it was time for obedient school kids to go to sleep.

“At midnight by the greenhouses,” Shintaro whispered as his last words before he, Kouchi, and Taiga left downstairs, towards their Common Rooms.

“See you later,” Hokuto whispered to Juri and Jesse when they separated at the corridor two floors up, Hokuto turning to the Ravenclaw tower while Juri and Jesse continued to the Gryffindor tower.

It was nerve-wrecking to listen to Kento and Shoki talking in their beds, Juri thought and decided to act like he was already sleeping. That would force the two others talk in a lower voice and maybe they would understand to go to sleep quicker that way. Eventually their chatter turned sparser and died completely, and Juri sighed in relief once he heard the quiet noise of slow peaceful breath from the both beds. It was about the time, Juri noticed as he glanced at his wristwatch. It was half past eleven already; he would have to hurry to make it in time.

Jesse was already waiting for him in the silent Common Room when Juri tiptoed down the stairs.

“What took you so long?” Jesse whispered, “We need to be quick so the others won’t have to wait.”

“Sorry. Kento and Shoki stayed awake late,” Juri said and they left the Common Room with as little noise as possible. They first tried to walk as quietly as they could but their shoes made small noises anyway, and on top of that the joints on Jesse’s knees made small snapping sounds every time he stepped a stair down.

“Can’t you do anything to that?” Juri hissed and Jesse shook his head apologetically.

“Sorry, they always do that when I try to be quiet,” he said and grimaced.

“There you are!” Hokuto hissed when they got to the greenhouses, “What took you so long?”

“Nocturnal roommates,” Juri huffed, “Let’s go!”

They walked across the school yards in silence and kept glancing around all the time, determined not to get caught before they had even gotten into the forest. Even though no-one was wandering around in such a late hour, they only dared to stop and talk aloud once they had passed the border of the forest. The night sky had been dark blue, but the tall dense trees covered the view and everything around them was just black darkness. They lighted up the ends of their wands but even with six wands the light was only so bright, and the darkness around their small sphere of light felt even deeper. 

Juri wasn’t afraid per se, at least not enough that he would have admitted it aloud, but he decided to walk closer to Shintaro’s side, just to feel a bit better. Shintaro, instead, didn’t look worried at all. He rolled open the map and they gathered around it again.

“Where should we go now?” Kouchi asked.

“Just a second,” Taiga said and laid his wand on his flat palm, “Point me!”

The wand immediately turned to point at somewhere their left, and Shintaro nodded.

“Good; we’ll just have to do that every once in a while and keep following the wand’s direction.”

“Wow,” Hokuto said, “What’s that spell?”

“Don’t you know it?” Shintaro said, his eyes round, “Doesn't everyone know it?”

“It’s like a compass,” Jesse said to Hokuto, “You’ve never needed the spell, that’s all. Here, I’ll show you.”

The spell was very simple and Hokuto learned it easily, but he still looked impressed when they continued walking.

“But compasses are an ancient invention, and they aren’t electrical,” he said thoughtfully after a while, “why don’t wizards use them?”

“We could,” Taiga said, “some of us do. There are, for example, small compasses that you can attach on the handle of your broom whenever you’re traveling long distances. I guess it’s just more useful this way. You always have your wand with you anyway, so why would you carry a compass too?”

“Makes sense,” Hokuto agreed with a nod.

Suddenly they heard weird noise in the darkness and froze on their feet.

“Are you all right?” Shintaro asked quietly, and Juri realized he had grabbed Shintaro’s arm.

“Yeah,” Juri murmured, sincerely hoping Shintaro wouldn’t want to ask more questions. He didn’t, thankfully. Instead, he looked at the map again.

“I guess we’d better change here,” Shintaro said quietly, “There might be weird creatures in the forest but as far as I know, most of them don’t mind animals. Jesse, take the map and keep your wand in your hand too.”

Jesse didn’t need to be told twice and he simply nodded. Juri felt slightly sorry for the boy; somehow the thought of staying in the human form in a place like this felt much scarier than changing into the animal form, even though Juri was only going to be a relatively small sized dog.

“Everything all right?” he asked, and Jesse nodded again. He was silent and slightly paler than usually, but he didn’t look really scared, which made Juri feel a bit better.

“Just ask and we’ll change back immediately,” he still pressed and Jesse gave him a small smile.

“It’s all right,” he said, “Just do it so we can continue.

The others nodded and, one by one, changed forms. Soon Jesse was standing alone in the small circle of his wand light, looking at Juri and the others.

“Are you sure you can take my weight?” Jesse asked Shintaro who nodded and growled gently, turning his back towards Jesse.

“Fine,” Jesse murmured and threw his leg over Shintaro’s back, taking a good hold on the wolf’s neck fur. Shintaro took a few experimental steps and nodded again. He could carry Jesse, at least part of the way. 

“To the North Border, please,” Jesse said as if he was traveling by the Knight Bus or a muggle taxi.

Kouchi looked at them from the ground, let out a small cry and ran up Jesse’s leg, settling comfortably in the small patch of Shintaro’s fur between Jesse’s thighs. Juri couldn’t help an amused wave of tail when he saw Shintaro rolling his eyes. 

Taiga was the first one to move ahead, flying to the direction his wand had pointed, and the others followed him. At some point Juri wondered if they’d need to stop and check the direction every once in a while. However, Taiga seemed to know where to fly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that a falcon, just like migratory birds, might have an innate compass in their heads.

Being a dog with dog’s senses made it all much easier for Juri. In human ears every noise in the forest was scary but the dog’s hearing could separate the noises better, and he didn’t need to be worried about every crackle he heard. He could also see better in the dark than he could ever had seen as a human. However, the most important help for him was his nose. Mostly he could only feel the bitter smell of moss and wet soil but every once in a while there was the smell of a living creature. Very often they were hares or squirrels, but sometimes he also smelled a nest of a fox. It felt funny, really. People always told stories about all the horrifying creatures that lived in the Forbidden Forest; no-one ever mentioned that also ordinary animals liked to live in the forest where they very rarely got disturbed by humans.

A wild owl was sitting on a branch of some tree, looking at them keenly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that the owl must have noticed Kouchi who was now sitting on Jesse’s shoulder. Juri was quite sure that the owl wouldn’t dare to try hunting an animal that was so close to a human being, but it still made him feel nervous. He had only ever been thinking about the dangers of magical creatures; he had never realized there could be non-magical animals that would gladly hunt his friends.

The traveling soon turned monotonous and even boring, and Juri found it really easy to just switch off his human thoughts for a while and let the doglike side of his mind take the lead. He didn’t always see Taiga in the deep darkness but he could hear and smell the bird, as well as the soft gait of Hokuto’s paws in front of him. Juri himself was trotting side by side with Shintaro who was panting lightly but didn’t look particularly weary. Kouchi had jumped back on Jesse’s lap and was probably snoozing off, his small head leaning against Jesse’s knee. Jesse himself looked a bit sleepy but he wasn’t so pale anymore, as far as Juri could tell in the dim light of the boy's wand.

Suddenly, when Juri estimated they had been on the run for at least an hour or maybe even longer with hardly any breaks, Taiga slowed down his pace and landed on some branch of a nearby tree. Hokuto halted under the same branch and both Juri and Shintaro stopped next to him.

“What is it?” Jesse whispered, tilting his head and trying his best to hear any weird noises that would possibly come from the forest.

Taiga waved one of his wings towards something in front of them and Jesse frowned.

“I can’t see anything,” he murmured. Kouchi looked at him and his wand, and then reached to cover the light on the end of the wand with his fluffy tail. “Oh,” Jesse said in understanding, “Nox.”

It took a while of them all before they got used to the deep darkness again, Jesse needing more time than the others, but when his eyes finally adjusted to the new lighting circumstances he gasped aloud. Juri understood his feeling well. He had noticed a while ago already that they were running up a gentle slope, but only now they could really see what was ahead.

They weren’t far from the top of the hill, and the sight ahead was rather mesmerizing. The top of the hill was deforested, only a few bushes growing here and there and they could finally see the nearly full moon and bright stars scattered all around the black cloudless sky. However, no matter how pretty the moon and the stars were, they felt rather insignificant when compared to the black silhouettes of the majestic creatures they had come to see.

Kouchi leaped down from Jesse’s lap and was the first to turn back into himself, Hokuto and Taiga following his example. Jesse scrambled onto his own legs that had grown numb during the long way, and Shintaro could change too.

“Are they really there?” Jesse whispered as they all settled behind some bushes, and Hokuto chuckled quietly.

“What else could they be. You see them, right? I don’t think there are any other magical creatures that’d look like that.”

On the top of the hill, there indeed were three centaurs. At first it was difficult for the boys to see any details, but every now and then the centaurs moved and the moonlight lighted their faces. One of them looked quite young, one was clearly very old, and one didn’t look like either one. Maybe his age was somewhere in the middle of the other two, Juri wondered. The centaurs were looking up to the sky, pointing at the stars and probably having a deep conversation about their positions and meanings.

“Let’s go a bit closer,” Hokuto murmured and tiptoed behind another bush, moving in the shadows until he was right at the edge of the forest and the treeless hilltop. The others followed him slowly, not wanting to disturb the centaurs.

“What are they doing?” Jesse asked when two of the centaurs started to wave their hands like they were drawing invisible lines in the air, and the third imitated the movements of their hands a bit more slowly.

“I think,” Taiga said slowly, “they’re teaching the youngest one. He must be really young then!”

After a while one of the centaurs stepped aside and just watched how the two other ones kept on drawing their lines. Then he turned his back and vanished somewhere behind the hill. It was a pity, but at least there were two left, and the boys followed keenly how the old one probably told the youngest something about connecting the stars with the lines they were drawing.

The movements of their hands and arms were smooth and steady, as if they were doing some extraordinary dance. Juri was fascinated by the centaurs’ serenity and suddenly realized how incredibly lucky they were, being able to see something like that.

He was just about to move a bit to get a better view when an angry voice behind him made them all flinch. Someone cried out of surprise, and the two centaurs on the hilltop turned to look in their direction.

“What are you doing here?”

It was the one centaur that had left a moment ago, Juri realized, and a nasty mixture of embarrassment and fear twisted the bottom of his stomach. They had gotten caught, and the blank expression on the centaur’s face together with the quiet anger in his words felt more threatening than shouting or raging would ever have.

“S-sorry,” he said, willing his voice to stay steady, “We didn’t want to disturb, we just--”

“You did not want to disturb, and yet you came here?” the centaur repeated, and Juri lowered his gaze. He couldn’t really explain it in any better way.

“Don’t blame them! It was my idea,” Shintaro said and lowered his head too, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t take all the responsibility,” Taiga snapped, “We were all equally in the plan.”

The two other centaurs walked to the edge of the forest too, stopping next to the first one. The oldest one’s face was expressionless but the youngest looked rather curious and it made Juri feel slightly better. Maybe the young one would understand their curiosity.

“We just wanted to see you,” Hokuto said in a small voice, “We’ve never seen a real centaur before.”

“What do you think we are? Zoo animals?” the centaur who had found them snapped, and Hokuto fell silent again, clearly ashamed by such a suggestion. Juri suddenly understood that must be how the centaurs felt, even though none of the boys had thought it that way. 

“We were not trying to spy on you with any ill purposes,” he said slowly, trying to sound as polite as he ever could, “We just… thought you’re amazing creatures, and we were curious. We’re very sorry.”

“At least they have manners,” the oldest centaur pointed out and Juri swallowed, wondering if he was just imagining or if the centaur really sounded slightly amused.

“What manners does sneaking around others’ areas show?” the angry centaur asked and crossed his arms. “As students of Hogwarts you must be aware you’re not allowed to enter the forest, and yet you did so. I wonder what would happen if your teachers knew what you’re doing in the middle of the night?”

“Please, don’t tell the teachers,” Shintaro gasped miserably, “You know, those four don't have much time left here anyway. They might even get expelled and that wouldn’t be fair!”

“Getting punished after having done wrong is only fair though,” the centaur said coldly.

“But if--” Juri started, but the oldest centaur raised his hand and he immediately shut up. The angry centaur looked like he had wanted to continue but he, too, stayed silent on the command of the oldest.

"Now, now. Be quiet, everyone. You children saw us; that’s what you wanted. Now return to the castle," the old centaur said. His voice was firm and authoritative but not unfriendly, and Juri finally dared to breathe again.

"We will," he said and took a few steps back, the rest of his friends following the example. The three centaurs watched silently at their withdrawing, until the young one shifted restlessly.

"When crossing the forest… take care," he said quickly, and the angriest centaur glared at him.

"We don't meddle with wizards' businesses," he grunted, but even though the youngest looked apologetic there was also a hint of stubbornness in his eyes.

"They have the right to know," he insisted but apparently didn't dare to say more. Juri wondered what the young centaur meant but he didn't even imagine staying any longer and ask. The six boys slowly turned around and walked back into the forest until they were far enough that they couldn’t see the hill anymore.

"That was scary," Hokuto sighed but his smile was starting to get back its usual brightness, "But we did see the centaurs!"

Everyone agreed with him; now that they were safe they didn't regret coming, even if at some point all of them had secretly believed they had made a mistake after all.

“We should go back,” Kouchi said and glanced up by habit, just to notice the sky was covered by the trees again.

They traveled slower this time. Everyone was tired, especially Shintaro who had to carry the weight of Jesse as well. Kouchi was the first to notice Shintaro's weariness and he jumped down, running on the ground for a short while until he made a huge leap and grabbed on Juri’s neck fur instead. Juri didn’t mind the passenger and kept on with the relaxed trot. 

Juri didn’t know how long they had been running, but suddenly he realized Shintaro was leaving behind. Juri immediately halted and barked at Hokuto and Taiga so they wouldn’t run away without the rest of the group, and then ran back to see what was wrong.

Jesse had crouched on the ground next to Shintaro, gently scratching the behind of his ear.

“He’s just tired,” Jesse said when Juri nudged Shintaro’s head with his nose and let out a small worried whine. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped him earlier.” Shintaro sniffed and shook his head but he was still panting heavily and didn’t even try acting cheerful or energetic.

“I’ll walk,” Jesse said and stood up again, “Let’s go slowly for a while. We can’t be very far from the castle anymore.” Juri nodded and turned into himself as well. Now that they weren’t moving so fast anymore, he made sure he kept his wand tightly in his hand. Hokuto, Kouchi, and Taiga stayed in their animal forms but adjusted into the new pace of traveling so that they stayed in a one group.

“I hope we’ll make it back into the castle before morning,” Juri murmured, “I’d rather not have to come up with fibs about our whereabouts tonight.”

“Same here,” Jesse agreed, “not only will people in the school be angry; my mother will totally freak out. She honestly believes one is doomed to death on the very moment they take the first step into the forest.”

“Yeah,” Juri said with a nod, “I was only seven that time but I still remember when Koki and his friends had a competition on their last year in the school. They wanted to find out who could break the most rules without getting expelled. He was lucky, the teachers liked him. But you should have seen the fit that our mother pulled. She’s usually rather cool about these things but I guess the twentieth owl from the school staff within a month was the last drop. She sent him a whole basket full of Howlers… what’s that smell?”

“Disgusting,” Jesse agreed and made a face when the smell got even stronger. “Seriously. Like a swamp that mountain trolls have been using as a toilet for three hundred years and--”

He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Instead, he let out a shocked yelp and suddenly vanished from Juri's side.

“Jesse!” he cried out and suddenly realized he knew where the awful smell had come from. In front of him there was a troll; an ugly, smelly, four-meter tall troll that had grabbed on the back of Jesse’s jacket, and was now holding him up in the air with its index finger and thumb. Juri felt how the fur on Shintaro’s neck quickly fuzzed up and a low rumbling growl came from his throat.

“Shin,” Jesse gasped in a shaky voice, staring into the troll’s cloudy squinted eyes, “don’t… don’t annoy it.”

“Jesse!” they heard Taiga’s voice and Juri gasped for breath as the troll turned to look towards the noise.

“Hey, you big fat moron,” Hokuto yelled from where he was standing with Taiga and Kouchi, “Yes, I was talking to you! Come here!” The troll did not move, but Taiga and Kouchi joined in with Hokuto and started to shout all kinds of insults that kept its attention in them and soon started to turn more and more creative.

“Quick,” Juri hissed to Jesse, “Try to wriggle out of the jacket!”

“Can’t,” Jesse gasped, “I can’t reach the zipper!”

“Well then I’ll make it drop you,” Juri said, “Watch out!”

Apparently the troll got fed up with the noisy boys who had started to throw nasty little spells against it. It took a few quick steps forward and reached its big hand to catch one of them. At the same time Juri waved his wand.

“Relashio!” he yelled, and a jet of fiery sparks hit on the troll’s hand right next to Jesse’s head. The troll groaned in pain and, as Juri had hoped, let go of Jesse’s jacket. The boy fell onto the ground with such a loud thump that it made Juri grimace.

“Are you all right?” he asked when he rushed towards Jesse.

“I am,” Jesse gasped and grimaced, “Nothing’s broken at least.”

“We need to get away from here!” Juri said and helped Jesse up on his feet, “Everyone, run! It’s too big and thick-skinned for our spells, let’s just try to elude him!”

In a wordless agreement all the boys darted in different directions. The troll groaned and ran after them. Juri wished he could have changed; he would have been much faster as a dog. Too bad the situation didn’t give him the time he would have needed to concentrate on the transfiguration. Besides, he couldn’t leave Jesse alone. He was starting to be out of breath, his heart was beating painfully fast, and there was a stinging pain on his side but he only dared to slow down a little bit when he was sure he didn’t hear any noise behind them.

“Let’s go,” Jesse pressed impatiently, hardly even panting yet and Juri made a face at him.

“How can you still run like that?” he asked, “I can’t even--”

A sharp scream stopped them both for a second. Then, without a second thought Jesse turned into the direction of the noise, and Juri didn’t have a choice but run after him, until bushes on the pathway turned too dense for them to get through without the help of their wands.

“The right spell,” Juri murmured and felt a panic rising in his mind; an awful feeling that effectively shut down his ability to think straight.

“Fuck, there’s no time for this,” Jesse growled. He stared at the bush, tears of anger and frustration rising into his eyes. Suddenly, in front of Juri’s eyes, he started to change. His already thin legs narrowed even more; his hands turned into another pair of legs, his ears moved higher on his head and his nose grew longer. When the branchy antlers were complete on the top of his head, Juri was staring at a gorgeous young whitetail deer that let out a surprised chuckle but didn’t wait any more. With a one graceful leap it jumped across the bushes and was gone.

For a second Juri stood on the pathway alone, his mouth open, and stared after Jesse. The moment of staying still calmed his nerves just enough that he could change, too, and soon he wriggled his way under the bushes. As a dog he wasn’t so dependent on the pathways but could go around or under the hindrances faster.

When he arrived to the others, everything was over already. The troll had gone - even its smell had faded away - and the forest was silent around them. Jesse was still in the deer form, standing next to Kouchi and Hokuto, and all of them were looking down at Taiga who was kneeling on the ground, holding something in his lap. He looked up when Juri arrived, and the anxious look in his eyes was alarming enough that cold fear flashed across Juri’s mind when he changed into a human again. Suddenly he felt sick as he realized the thing in Taiga’s lap was Shintaro. The wolf lay on the ground unmoving, and Taiga’s hands were stained with blood.

“The troll,” Taiga said in a thick voice and slowly petted the rough fur of Shintaro's head, “It caught him. He was too tired to run faster.”

“Shintaro,” Juri gasped and slumped down next to his unconscious friend, too shocked to understand Taiga’s words, “He… he isn’t--”

“Not dead,” Taiga said quickly, “But the troll threw him down on the ground quite badly, and I think its claws scratched him. As far as I know, trolls aren’t poisonous in any way, but they’re incredibly filthy, and I’m afraid the wound will get infected if we don’t get him back into the castle soon.”

“What can we do?” Juri asked desperately, trying to come up with anything that would help. It all was starting to be too much for him. He hated it how panicking always made him unable to think clearly, and the tiredness and shock didn’t help at all.

“Shintaro,” Taiga said in a loud voice and shook the wolf's upper body gently, “Shintaro, wake up!”

“Wouldn’t it be better if he stayed unconscious?” Kouchi said quietly, “If he’s badly hurt, I mean. At least he won’t feel the pain like this.”

“I thought so too but we need to know how badly he is hurt. And we can’t take him to the castle like this anyway,” Taiga said and kept calling Shintaro’s name until the wolf winced and whimpered aloud, his canine face twisting in pain.

“Shin,” Juri called in relief, “Are you all right?”

The wolf opened his eyes and looked around, but even a small movement seemed to hurt too much and he decided to stay still.

“Shintaro, listen to me,” Taiga said in a low voice, still petting his head. “You need to change back. I know it will hurt, but you have to. We can’t get you back to the castle like this.”

Shintaro nodded and closed his eyes. After a while his fur started to slowly withdraw back into his skin, his tail vanished and ears changed their place back to where they belonged.

“Fuck,” Shintaro murmured when he could talk again, “Sorry to cause trouble.”

“Shut up,” Taiga said gently, “We’ll take care of you.”

“Where’s the troll?” Juri suddenly remembered, and Hokuto flashed a dark grin at him.

“It won’t be disturbing us in a while,” he said, “In fact, it might never want to see a human being again.”

“What did you do to it?” Shintaro asked and tried to turn his head but Taiga wouldn’t let him move an inch.

“It was this guy’s idea in fact,” Hokuto said and patted Kouchi’s shoulder, “He invented some creative ways to use a growth spell.”

“But it was you who cast the spell,” Kouchi chuckled, refusing to take the whole glory to himself.

“Have you ever really thought about how scary squirrels are?” Hokuto asked Juri, “Especially when they are more than sixteen feet tall. I think the troll peed into its pants when he saw Kouchi!”

The thought was really funny, and Juri smiled a bit, until Shintaro’s small whine reminded him about the problem. How would they get the boy out of the forest? He had no idea where they were anymore, and Shintaro couldn’t move like that.

“Where are you hurting exactly?” Taiga asked and studied the boy, “Head? Somewhere inside?”

“I don’t think it's anything serious,” Shintaro murmured and took a deep breath, testing if he still could do it. “But I can’t move my arm at all.”

Taiga ran his palm across the said limb, from Shintaro's neck to the tips of his fingers, carefully looking for all the places where touching made Shintaro whine or grimace.

“The collar bone. Probably something in the wrist, too. The blood on the side and stomach must be just a scratch, then,” Taiga said and everyone sighed in relief.

“Wait a second,” Hokuto said thoughtfully, “If we managed to keep the arm unmoving, do you think you could sit up?”

“I guess,” Shintaro said slowly, “Do whatever you want; it can’t be worse than this, right?”

For a moment Hokuto eyed at Shintaro’s arm. Then he gently tapped on a few places, murmuring a silent spell.

“What did you do?” Shintaro asked with round eyes as a wooden splint and a roll of bandage appeared from the thin air, and wrapped his arm into a neat packet.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Well, it does, but not so badly, now that I don’t need to hold it up with the muscles anymore. What did you _do_?”

“Good,” Hokuto said and smiled approvingly, “I’m happy it worked. I’ve been practicing before but I’ve never had an opportunity to use it in a real situation; it’s a temporary spell that mediwizards use when the patient is being transported to the hospital. I thought it might make an impression when I apply for the training in Saint Mungo.”

“It works,” Shintaro said and smiled thankfully.

“In case you have forgotten,” Kouchi murmured, “We’re still not safe. Let’s go before the troll changes its mind and decides I wasn’t scary after all!”

“Can you get up?” Taiga asked Shintaro who nodded hesitantly. With Juri and Taiga’s help he got up on his feet.

“Not nice, but tolerable,” Shintaro admitted when he tried to stand without help.

“It sucks to make you walk though,” Hokuto murmured, frowning, “It’ll take ages to get out of here and you can’t even fight if we meet more dangerous creatures.”

With Jesse being so silent everyone had forgotten him for a while, and Juri jumped in surprise when Jesse touched his shoulder with his nose.

“Huh? What is it?” he asked and Jesse moved next to Shintaro, turning sideways in front of him.

“Really?” Taiga asked and bit his lip, “Do you think you can do it? Deer are not made for carrying people, you know. It could seriously hurt your back.”

Jesse nodded, but stayed where he was and wouldn’t move before Shintaro petted his short butterbeer-colored fur.

“I was supposed to carry you though,” he murmured and Jesse shook his head, glancing at the boy expectantly.

“Come on, let’s help him up,” Juri said and together with Taiga, Kouchi, and Hokuto lifted Shintaro until he was sitting on Jesse’s back, looking a bit insecure and only a bit uncomfortable.

“Can you do it?” Juri asked Jesse who nodded after a few tentative steps. His movements were a bit stiff but even in a slow pace he moved faster than Shintaro would have been able to walk, and they decided they had to try. One by one the others changed again, but this time everyone stayed very closely together, even Taiga who flew in front of the others and showed the way.

They hadn't been very deep in the forest after all, and Juri let out a relieved growl when he saw the black silhouette of the castle against the sky that was slowly turning velvet blue instead the former blackness.

By the edge of the forest Jesse stopped and waited until the others changed back and helped Shintaro down. Juri was immediately by Shintaro’s side, supporting him on the healthy arm.

“Are you all right?” he asked and Shintaro nodded quietly. He was tired and hurt, and the journey back hadn’t been the most comfortable way of traveling; a deer’s narrow bony back wasn’t built for anyone to ride on it.

“Yeah,” Shintaro whispered, “But it would be nice to get some sleep.”

“We all need to sleep,” Taiga said, “But first we’ll take you to the hospital wing.”

“We’re so fucked up,” Hokuto murmured aloud what everyone already knew.

“There’s no choice though,” Kouchi said and made a face. “We’ll probably get detention for every single evening for the rest of the spring.” It couldn’t be helped, and everyone prepared themselves to what was waiting ahead as they started walking towards the castle.

“Jesse?” Hokuto asked as he looked back, “Come on, you can’t go to the castle like that.”

Everyone turned to look at Jesse who was still standing by the edge of the forest and looked like he had frozen on his four legs.

“What is it?” Juri asked impatiently. He wanted to get Shintaro to the hospital wing as quickly as possible, and anything that slowed them annoyed him. Jesse’s ears flattened against his head as he shook his head furiously and took a few side steps. He stepped back and forth again, turned around and Juri could see the flash of fear in his big black eyes.

“He can’t turn back,” Kouchi suddenly gasped, and Jesse hung his head sadly.

“No way,” Hokuto whispered and rushed back to their miserable friend, taking his head between his hands. “Jesse, concentrate! Don’t panic. You will change back!” Jesse looked into Hokuto’s eyes and stood still, and for a moment it looked like he believed Hokuto and relaxed a bit. However, nothing else happened and Juri swallowed. They were already in trouble; it hadn’t even come up to his mind that their problems could get even worse.

“What do we do now?” he asked helplessly, still holding tight on Shintaro’s unbroken arm.

“Someone needs to stay here with him,” Taiga said firmly, “I think you should, Juri.”

Juri opened his mouth but he didn’t know what to say and closed it again. He was torn between wanting to take care of his boyfriend and best friend, and didn’t know what to do. Shintaro needed help but so did Jesse, and in fact Jesse might be the one whose problem was more serious one. It was against the rules of the school to go to the forest, but being an unregistered Animagus was downright illegal, and against the national wizarding law.

“We’ll take him to the hospital wing,” Kouchi promised and stepped in to take Juri’s place by Shintaro’s side.

“You’re both Gryffindors,” Taiga explained apologetically, “We'll definitely get into a trouble for not being in our beds, but four getting punished is better than six. They might not come to check the Gryffindor tower at all, if they think it's only us and you two are sleeping in your beds like good kids should. You'll get more time like that.”

The thought of the four boys carrying the responsibility for the two of them wasn't fair at all but Taiga had a point, and Juri nodded. He was reluctant to let Shintaro go but, as he suddenly realized, even more reluctant to leave Jesse alone behind.

“It’s okay,” Shintaro suddenly said to Juri and smiled at him, “I’ll be all right.”

“I know,” Juri said and moved to Jesse’s side. They stood quietly by the edge of the forest and watched the receding backs of their friends until the darkness swallowed them, and Juri and Jesse were alone.

“I wonder what went wrong,” Juri said and carefully petted Jesse’s neck. “Try to change again? Maybe you were just nervous.”

Jesse stood still for a moment but nothing happened and Juri sighed. Jesse lay down on the ground and Juri followed him, sitting as close to him as he could. After a moment Jesse leaned his head on Juri’s shoulder and sighed as well.

“I’m sorry,” Juri said quietly, “This is my entire fault. The whole Animagus thing. I knew how dangerous it could be, and yet I was an idiot who needed to try. And I even talked you guys into it. I shouldn’t have. I’ve had fun as a dog but it’s not worth it if you…” He couldn’t finish the sentence but pressed his face against his knees, pressing his eyes shut and wishing more than anything that everything would be all right once he opened them again. It was a childish wish, and he knew it wouldn’t become true.

A warm puff of air in his ear made him look up again. Jesse was looking at him, and even in the beautiful big black deer eyes Juri could see Jesse’s gentle expression. He wasn’t blaming Juri; instead, he was comforting him. It was just like him, Juri realized. Whenever something went wrong, only rarely Jesse tried to fight back. Whatever happened, he calmly endured it all and let it pass, and survived from any hardship as a winner.

“Don’t worry,” Juri said and started to pet Jesse’s neck and back again. Now that he finally had time to sit down and be quiet, he was starting to feel the effects of not having slept in the whole night. His eyelids felt heavy and as minutes passed, it became harder to keep his head up. In the end he threw his other arm across Jesse’s back and leaned his head down against his side. Jesse was warm next to him and his peaceful breathing was calming enough that Juri couldn’t fight against the sleepiness anymore. He snoozed off, too tired to be afraid of any weird creatures or animals that might see them at the edge of the forest.

He woke up with a startle when he felt something poking his cheek. As he opened his eyes, he had to blink a few times before he believed he wasn’t still dreaming.

“Jesse! How--”

“I fell asleep,” Jesse said, “I don’t know, maybe it helped? I woke up at some point and decided to try once more, and I just changed without any problems at all.” He was grinning widely while talking but Juri could hear the relief in his voice and see the same feeling in his eyes, and Juri couldn’t help himself but stormed up to glomp his best friend.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said and Jesse nodded.

“Me too. But,” he added and the happiness of his smile forced Juri to smile too, “I finally learned it! And I can do it properly now; I already tried while you slept. Look!” There, in front of Juri’s eyes, Jesse changed into the deer form and back again several times, as if wanting to show _he could do it_.

The cool air of the early morning was chilly and Juri shivered now that he was awake enough to realize he was freezing.

“Let’s go back,” Juri said, “It's still early enough that we’ll probably be back before anyone wakes up!”

They weren’t that lucky.


	9. Chapter 9

“So, the last two missing lambs are finally arriving.” 

As soon as Juri and Jesse slipped through the door of the Gryffindor common room, they met the Divination teacher who was also the Head of their house. He was tapping his foot against the floor and staring at them with a very serious look on his face, and Juri suddenly felt cold shivers that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. “Come with me,” he said and the boys had no other choice but follow him into his office where Hokuto, Taiga, Kouchi, and Shintaro were already standing in a one guilty line with each of their Head of Houses present as well.

“Shintaro!” Juri cried out when he saw the boy with the others. His arm was properly bandaged now, and Juri also saw glances of bandages through the troll-ripped hem of his shirt. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Shintaro said but apparently he didn’t dare to say more and Juri decided it was better if he didn’t say anything either as he had no idea of what his friends had already told to the teachers.

“Well, here we have a pretty sight,” the Arithmancy teacher, the Head of Ravenclaw House, sighed and shook her head sadly. “Dear boys, what on earth was going on in your minds? Going into the forest, and even in the middle of the night!”

“Sorry,” Shintaro said, “it was originally my idea.”

“Don’t try to take the blame again,” Hokuto hissed and took a deep breath before looking at the four teachers. “We were all equally in the plan.”

“But why?” asked the teacher of Charms who was also the Head of Slytherin.

“Centaurs,” Shintaro said, hardly daring to raise his gaze from the floor, “We wanted to see them.”

“But there hasn't been a single centaur in the forest in ten years!” the Divination teacher said, “How did you suddenly get the idea?”

“I heard you talking,” Shintaro said and glanced at him carefully, “When you told professor Katori that the centaurs have come back. None us had ever seen a centaur before but--”

“Did you really _see_ them?” the Divination teacher interrupted him.

“Yes,” Shintaro said and the others confirmed his words by nodding, “But they didn’t like it. They told us to go back and--”

“You _talked_ to them!” the Divination teacher cried out and the boys nodded again.

“I don’t think you realize how very unusual situation that was,” the teacher said and if Juri hadn’t been so afraid about what would happen to them now, he might have grinned widely when he saw the teacher’s expression. Jealousy, however hardly he tried to cover it, was very clear on his face. It wasn’t difficult to see that their Divination teacher would gladly have used an opportunity to talk with a centaur, too.

“What about you two?” the fourth teacher, the Head of Hufflepuff. He was the one Juri was the most afraid of at the moment; Transfigurations were his specialty and he would probably be the first one to guess something if even one of the six students gave him any reason to think about some things.

“Yes, sir?” Juri asked, fearing what was about to come.

“Why did you two only return now? When we were asked to come to the Hospital Wing, we only had these four. They insisted it was only them but when would they go somewhere without you two? We immediately guessed it must be a lie.”

Somewhere deep inside Juri felt a pinch of pride. He was happy to belong in a group of friends that were known to be always together. At the same time, no matter how much he didn’t want to get punished, he was happy they were all six together when getting scolded. No matter what Taiga had said, Juri didn’t think he could have stood it if only the four had gotten a punishment while he and Jesse would have gotten out of it just like that.

“We got lost when escaping from the troll,” Juri said in a steady voice, trying to look like he was telling the truth, and praying in his mind that the others had said nothing about them earlier. Why would they have, since neither Juri nor Jesse had really done anything important on the most critical moment? To his relief the teachers seemed to believe him.

“Why didn’t you just use the Four-Point Spell? Matsumura told us the six of you used it when you were searching for the centaurs.”

“We panicked,” Jesse said and the embarrassment on his face looked innocent enough that even Juri might have believed him, hadn’t he known the truth. “I know the spell but I simply forgot to use it.”

“We had to walk quite a long way,” Juri said and glanced at his four friends, “I’m happy the others made it here before us. We were afraid they’d still be in the forest.”

The Head of Ravenclaw shook her head again and looked very tired and very unhappy with the whole situation.

“What should we do with you?” she asked and looked very troubled, “The school year will end soon and the finals have already passed so it would be in vain to get you expelled or even suspended you now. Not that I'd want to do that anyway.”

“I suggest,” the Head of Slytherin started thoughtfully, “That everyone gets detention for the next three evenings. Separately. I’m sure we can find six teachers who need helping hands now that we’re already cleaning the castle for the summer. And of course we will send owls to your families.”

The other Heads of Houses nodded approvingly, and Juri could hardly believe his ears. No-one was going to get expelled! What would a few hours of scrubbing old Cauldrons or dusting ancient books mean when none of them was going to get kicked out of the school? He was shaking again, this time from the amazing feeling of anxiety slowly melting away. After having been so amazingly lucky he was sure he could even bear a basket full of Howlers.

He was wrong, though. The last time he had only watched his mother sending the Howlers to Koki. Nothing could have prepared him to the feeling of actually receiving a whole basket full of Howlers during the breakfast next morning. He didn’t have enough time to even consider quickly opening them - there were too many - and his mother’s Howlers exploded simultaneously above the Gryffindor table. If the rumor of their adventure hadn’t already echoed across the ears of every student, teacher, ghost, and painting in the school, that moment would have fixed it.

"Don't worry," Kento consoled him with a pat on Juri's shoulder, "You guys will probably become a legend among the students."

It was hard to feel the glory of being a legend, though, when rubbing the third-floor toilets clean with an old scrub brush. _Without any magic_ which, Juri thought when big droplets of sweat ran down his forehead, was an inhuman punishment. By the time the first evening of their detention finally ended, every muscle on his hands and arms was aching and the knees of his jeans were filthy from all the crawling on the dirty floors.

"Don't complain," Jesse murmured from his armchair, coughing weakly between every word, "I archived all the student records of this place from the year 1427 to 1654! You have no idea how dusty those old pieces of parchment are!"

"Cheer up," Kouchi suggested, "maybe you'll reach this century after two more days?"

"I'd rather file the archives, Hokuto moaned, "I've mowed the lawn at home many times but it's a completely other thing to mow a whole Quidditch field worth of tall grass, with that ancient mechanical lawn mower…"

"What's this smell?" Taiga asked and scrunched his nose, "It's… disgusting."

"It's me," Shintaro murmured from his place on the sofa.

"What did you _do_?"

"Canned ten gallons of fermented seaweed mash at the dungeons," Shintaro said with a gloomy sigh. "The teacher said the smell will fade in a few days."

"Nice to know," Juri murmured and Shintaro made a face at him.

The next two days were busy with people packing and looking for everything they had lost along the school year, students whining about the amount of homework their teachers gave them for the summer holiday, planning their holidays, and trying to enjoy what little time they still had to hang around the school grounds.

On the third afternoon of the detention Juri finished his tasks as quickly as he could and immediately rushed out of the castle when he was allowed to. Then he sat on a bench up in one of the stands around the Quidditch pitch, watching how Hokuto swept the floor with an old cleaning broom.

"Not much left anymore," Juri cheered his friend who rolled his eyes.

"I would be done faster if you lent me a helping hand," Hokuto pointed out but Juri quickly refused with the excuse of having suffered his punishment already. He lay down to one of the benches instead, closing his eyes and letting the rays of the sun warm his face. He was still pale after the long winter but it was only a matter of time; he got tanned easily and before long his skin color would deepen into warm brown.

Hokuto swept all the dust and dry leaves down from the side of the stand and moved to the next row of benches. Juri snoozed off, until Hokuto's surprised noise made him open his eyes.

"What is it?" Juri asked, shading his face with his hand and turning to look at Hokuto who was looking down at the pathway that led to the Quidditch pitch.

"Shintaro," Hokuto said and tilted his head. "Man, I wonder what's wrong with him."

"What do you mean?" Juri asked and quickly stood up, rushing to see whatever Hokuto saw down there.

Hokuto was right; it was obvious that something was bothering their friend. His shoulders were hunched when he walked, the way he moved was somewhat slack, and the expression on his face was sullen when he slogged closer to the Quidditch pitch.

By the edge of the pitch Shintaro stopped and looked around until he saw Juri and Hokuto up in one of the stands. Suddenly his face was all bright and smiley when he waved at them eagerly, but there was a certain stiffness in his posture that caught Juri's eyes. Hokuto noticed the same thing, and nudged Juri's arm with his elbow.

"I think someone is in a need of a good serious talk," he murmured, "And I think you should be the one who talks with him."

"I guess," Juri answered reluctantly. He hated the thought of forcing Shintaro to talk to him but what else could he do? Hokuto was right; there was something bothering Shintaro, and Juri knew from experience that Shintaro would never initiate the talk himself.

He beckoned to Shintaro so the boy would stay where he was, and rushed down the narrow and creaky wooden stairs of the stand.

"Huh? I could have come up there too," Shintaro said but Juri shook his head and dragged Shintaro away, to the path that would eventually lead to the forbidden forest. (He made sure they left the path well before coming even close to the forest; he didn't want anyone to see them and think they were doing something wrong again, now that their detention was finally over.)

"What is it?" Shintaro pressed when Juri just kept walking around the grounds without saying a word, "What's wrong with you?"

"No, what's wrong with _you_?" Juri asked in a firm tone. "I saw you coming to the Quidditch pitch. I saw your face."

"Oh," Shintaro said and hesitated, "It's nothing really. Don't worry about it!"

"Ugh, shut up moron," Juri snapped and crossed his arms, "You're a terrible liar. There is something bothering you and I promise I won't stop nagging you before you tell me what's going on in your stupid head!"

For a second Juri saw a hint of annoyance flash on Shintaro's face and he wondered if he had been too harsh, but then Shintaro sighed and nodded, and Juri let out a breath he hadn't noticed he had been holding.

"It's just," Shintaro murmured and continued walking slowly, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, "I don't know. Well, it's you guys. All of the others too, but mostly you."

"Me?" Juri asked, unable to cover the confusion in his voice.

"You," Shintaro repeated and avoided Juri's eyes, turning to look at the castle behind them instead. "You won't be here next year. All of you."

Oh. So that was the problem. Too bad Juri couldn't do much to help the situation.

"Jesse will be here," he tried, even though he knew it was in vain. Shintaro already knew it, and obviously it didn't make the situation much better.

"But it's not the same," Shintaro murmured. "We don't have any classes in common, and I know he will be lonely without you guys, too. The hideout will be so silent."

"It's just one year," Juri said and Shintaro snorted at his words.

"It's easy for you to say! You get to do new things, you'll meet new people and all, while we'll just stay here, left behind!"

"You'll get used to it," Juri said and immediately wished he hadn't, when Shintaro suddenly looked at him angrily. Juri felt slightly intimidated by the boy's fury. It wasn't like Shintaro to lose his cool like that.

"What if I don't _want_ to get used to it? What if we're too lonely here, and I'll become a grumpy old seventh-year student who scares all the first-years?"

"You won't," Juri said firmly, trying to control the growing feeling of insecurity and frustration. He wasn't good at dealing with things like that. He wasn't good at it at all, and he had no idea how to make it better. Whatever he said, Shintaro just got angrier.

For a moment it really looked like Shintaro wanted to punch him and run away. But when the silence between them got longer, Shintaro finally sighed and flopped to lean against some mossy rocks next to the path. He looked down, blinking furiously, and his voice was rough and weak at the same time when he forced the words out of his mouth.

"I'll miss you," Shintaro said, and Juri, too, felt a sting of longing in his chest. It was stupid, really - they were together now and there shouldn't have been any reason to miss each other. Yet he already did.

"I know," Juri whispered, "I'll miss you too."

Shintaro nodded wordlessly, and Juri moved to lean against the same rock, close enough that he could grab the boy's hand between them without looking too obvious.

Shintaro's hand was familiar and warm, but Juri couldn't help noticing the way his hold on Juri's hand was just a bit tighter than usually. Fuck subtlety, Juri thought and without a word leaned in to press his lips on Shintaro's.

"It's just the matter of one Floo Powder trip to get from Diagon Alley to Hogsmead. I'll come back every once in a while," he promised. It was just a hasty whisper between kisses, but it was the best Juri could offer and Shintaro seemed to understand it.

"Besides," Shintaro added later when they were already going back towards the castle, "We have the whole summer."

Juri smiled and nodded. Sure, in a few months their lives were going to change more than they had changed in many years - ever since Juri had gone to Hogwarts for the first time when Shintaro had still been too young to follow him - but they still had a little more time to stay together like this, and he wanted to make the best of it.

 

\- - -

 

Hogwarts Express had never been so quick before; at least that's what it felt like to Juri when he looked out from the window and noticed they'd soon arrive at London. His feelings were a mixture of excited anticipation towards the future and wistful happiness for the years he had spent in Hogwarts. He already missed what he had left behind but at the same time he was eager to see what was ahead, and he recognized the same feeling on the faces of his friends as well.

Shintaro and Jesse exchanged silent looks whenever their friends got too noisy but Juri was delighted to see neither one of them looked really unhappy. In a way, the next school year would be something new for the two of them as well, and Juri was happy for that.

"We'll be there soon," he said in a brisk tone, having decided it was his job as the designated joker of the group to boost the mood even more, "Now, remember the rules everyone! No paw- and hoofprints on the mats. No hiding nuts and cones under people's pillows. No shedding fur and feathers on our mothers' sofas! Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" everyone yelled and burst out into overjoyed laughter. On the next minute they were already agreeing to meet as soon as possible ("We could even meet tonight! I mean, what's stopping us?") and planning all the amazing things they could do during the long summer holiday, now that they had finally learned the Animagus spell and thus achieved the goal they had pursued for years.


End file.
